A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

In Answer to Fyodor Dostoyevsky Supposedly Classifying bottle-- Were the Two to Live in the Same Era-- as "Scum"

don_budge could do like any of these guys described by Michel de Montaigne:

Mark Antony was the first who had himself drawn in Rome-- and a minstrel girl beside him-- by lions harnessed to a chariot. Heliogabalus did as much later, calling himself Cybele, the mother of the gods; and also by tigers, imitating the god Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach, and another time four dogs, and yet again four naked wenches, having himself, starked naked too, drawn by them in pomp. The Emperor Firmus had his chariot drawn by ostriches of marvelous size, so that it seemed rather to fly than to roll.

[bottle]

By all means...go and fuck yourself.

What about the new people I've met? And yesterday was my annual physical. My physician was amazed that I had lost 30 pounds so that I am close to the weight at which I want to play tennis. She asked how I did it.

What a nice person she is. And what a refreshment after reading in Montaigne about how awful doctors are.

She suggested that I had landed on my feet once again.

[bottle]

I could destroy you. But I am not going to do it. Because Jesus told me so. Don't do it he said.

Ask Jesus if He wants me to hit Ellie-bams or Federfores or both.

[bottle]

How many of you knew or care, class-- I mean my readers-- that I used to be an education editor? I'm counting the hands. None.

But there is a group in the United States that has this education thing all worked out. Does that include tennis instruction? I would think so.

All one has to do is attend an October conference in Atlanta or Las Vegas, after which one will be an educational consultant making $1000 a day or $364,000 a year.

The group loves people who bring the experience of having taught in prison schools. The group loves retired school teachers whose brains are still seething with the knowledge of things not done right. The group wants to reinvigorate these retirees and set them on their feet so they can go quack-quack.

"We have the substance," a spokesman for the group says. "We just need great presenters."

[bottle]

My Older Sister

My older sister says I am lucky to be alive.

[bottle]

I feel the same sort of thing here in Sweden...the land of Liberalism. But beneath every beating heart lies the beast. The human being. The Human Race. Go ahead...label me a racist. I am the outsider. Always have been and always will be. I don't care if it is 10 billion against one...the odds do not daunt me. I stand alone...on my own merits and my own liabilities.

Don't be a goopy sentimentalist.

[bottle]

No Justice, No Pizza

No hitting,
No Tiger wins

No pitching,
No Tiger wins

Rebuilding,
No Tiger wins

[bottle]

Old and Interesting Tennis Books

TENNIS WITHOUT MISTAKES by Vince Eldred, with a picture of Tim Mayotte on the cover.

This book, though very good throughout, would be worth its price just for the compact one hand backhand it teaches.

Also, in his introduction, George Plimpton is terrific in explaining the trouble that literary people have with the lingo of contemporary tennis, asserting that they take the admonitions, mottoes and tips too literally.

George Plimpton on Vince Eldred: "I am especially partial to Vince Eldred's metaphorical usage...to such hints as to pretend to place the jar on the shelf in order to extend the toss of the ball for the serve. Excellent for me-- one who has the bad habit of letting the ball drop too far, until it's a question of whether my ear or the racquet is going to hit it first."

[bottle]

Ellie-bam or Federfore?

It is an amusing conception to imagine a mind exactly balanced between two equal desires. For it is indubitable that it will never decide, since inclination and choice imply inequality in value; and if we were placed between the bottle and the ham with an equal appetite for drinking and for eating, there would doubtless be no solution but to die of thirst and of hunger.-- Montaigne

[bottle]

Just make it last longer than 90 minutes....

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/01/sh...st-90-minutes/

Good wan. And that reminds me that Ezra Pound said that France achieved intellectual superiority in the world when it shortened the class period in schools to 40 minutes.

(https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/a...zra_pound.html)

[stotty]

Reader, can you believe this!? My God. A temporary truce has fallen upon the world.

Just make it last longer than 90 minutes....

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/01/shortest-cease-fire-ever-hamas-resumes-attacks-kidnaps-israeli-soldier-after-just-90-minutes/

[bottle]

Yep, that is true.

Reader, can you believe this!? My God. A temporary truce has fallen upon the world.

[10splayer]

Thank you. That's nice. Would have been over your head too. Or over anybody's head.

Yep, that is true.

[bottle]

[QUOTE=don_budge;n65968]
No sympathy from me...you made your bed. Go and lie in it.

Yeah, I made a terrible decision when I decided to do improv theater with 14-year-old Maxine on the train from Toronto to Windsor. Should be drawn and quartered for that one.

[bottle]

Okay

I'm okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Or did I use the word "okay" too many times?

Maybe I can just do short-term substitution. Lion taming works best kept short and simple.

"Take a piece of paper. You are in a small plane a mile high. The engine fails. The plane begins to plunge. Now what do you see and think and feel?"

It is interesting that don_budge thinks I use a "strawman" approach in trying to instruct, I guess either here in the forum or in a classroom.

I never understood what he meant until he recently said I ask a question and then answer it myself.

I do that. But there is a pause. The student or reader addresses the question and maybe comes up with an answer more interesting than mine.

This is an acceptable way to use one's power of conversation.

If the student/reader fails to answer well, one proceeds to give one's own answer.