Courtesy of Jim Macdonald, by way of sazettel:

Things I Learned from British Folk Ballads
by Jim Macdonald

Don't ignore warnings. If someone tells you to beware of Long Lankin, friggin' beware of him. If someone tells you not to go by Carterhaugh, stay away. Same goes for your mother asking you not to go out hunting on a particular day. Portents about weather, particularly when delivered by an old sailor who is not currently chatting up a country maid, are always worth heeding.

A farmer in Redhill, Great Britain, built a castle, then hid it behind hay bales. He skirted some zoning regs, it seemed, and tried to take advantage of a loophole by hiding his castle for four years, after which he thought it would be grandfathered in. Or something.

The council wants the building near Redhill some 30 km south of London to be demolished, along with an associated conservatory, marquee structure, wooden bridge, patio, decking and tarmac racecourse.

"It looks like a mock-Tudor house from the front and it's got two turrets at the back," the spokeswoman said. "I understand there is also a cannon."

All jpsorrow's fault, by way of difrancis.

Who would I kill?

1) that person in the checkout line who doesn't pull out their checkbook until the checker gives them their total

2) drivers who do not use their turn indicators

3) drivers who wait to turn on their turn indicators until they are into the turn

4) other drivers, period. couldn't I just pick 'em off at random, just to keep the rest on their toes and off my ass?

5) female announcers with squeaky voices. Lauren Bacall learned to modulate, and so should you.

Not that I have a PhD that requires expunging, but it's good to know that services such as these are available if required.

LETTER FROM WAL-MART

( swiped from Susan Shwartz's SFFNet group )

Quotes from the works of PG Wodehouse. Hit refresh for a new quote.

`If I had my life to live again, Jeeves, I would start it as an orphan without any aunts. Don't they put aunts in Turkey in sacks and drop them in the Bosphorus?'

you, Jeeves, and you may quote me as saying this: Behind every poor, innocent, harmless blighter who is going down for the third time in the soup you will find, if you look carefully enough, the aunt who shoved him into it.'

they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.'

And more: It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

And again: My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice... If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee. Jeeves and Song of Songs (1930)

Oh criminy, this is priceless: My personal animosity against a writer never affects my opinion of what he writes. Nobody could be more anxious than myself, for instance, that Alan Alexander Milne should trip over a loose bootlace and break his bloody neck, yet I re-read his early stuff at regular intervals with all the old enjoyment.

So many years have passed since first you sought
the lands beyond the edges of the sky,
so many moons reflected in your eye,
(familiar newness, fear of leaving port),
since first you sought, and failed, and learned to fall,
(first hope, then cynicism, silent dread,
the countless stars, still counting overhead
the seconds to your final voyage of all...)
and last, in glory gold and red around
your greatest search, your final quest to know!
yet... ashes drift, the embers cease to glow,
and darkened life in frozen death is drowned;
and ashes on the swell are seen no more.
The silence surges. Error 404.