The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Friday, February 11, 2011

Poetry? At a time like this?

First, have a look at this article about the sons of dictators and how that works out for them, the dictator in question, and the people being dictated to. Next, enjoy Shelley's England in 1819:

England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless a book sealed;
A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.


Percy Bysshe Shelley

Needless to say, no glorious Phantom burst, but it's an interesting last-minute cop out on Shelley's part. And it wasn't published until after his death and the death of most of the people he was talking about. No twitter back then, and no first amendment, either.

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