- I think he has probably gained some sort of grip on your point.
- How far to Damascus now, Dad?
- “Homophobia: Nature or Nurture?”
- Oh, but you ask some entertaining questions when your brain
has died for the day.
- It is possible to be boring and yet have excellent taste.
- Some guys get their kicks out of near death experiences. Oh
well, some people liked Cliff Richard too...
- Life is a voyage in search of someone who will tell you that you
have bad breath.
- In a subsequent message, he recalled his fondest Australian
memory—a “superb” Australian wine called Barossa
Pearl, which he remembered from the sixties as the finest wine
he’d ever had.
This totally flummoxed me. It’s like saying Engelbert
Humperdink is the king of rock ’n roll.
There’s just no way you can answer mail like that, so I
ignored it.
- Long ago I worked out the true meaning of the phrase
“sustainable use of wildlife”: if it is good to eat, it is worth
sustaining.
-
- What is the difference between a slut
and a bitch?
- A slut will fuck anyone; a bitch will
fuck anyone but me.
- There are few real differences between an adolescent male and
an adult male. One is that you lose your throwing arm fairly
quickly. Another is that you can't piss as far horizontally from a
balcony. But the main difference is this: the adolescent will say:
“I'm just off down to the shop for a packet of smokes and
I’ll be back in 10 minutes.” He is never seen again.
The adult will say: “I’m just off down to the shop
for a packet of smokes and, by the way, I won’t be coming
back.”
This is noble and responsible.
- Upon being struck an horrendous blow on the point of the elbow
by a vicious rising ball, as a cricketer I will show no
expression, walk down the pitch a pace or two, and prod a mark on
the pitch. I may, if I am a gentleman, acknowledge the quality of
the ball to the bowler by giving him a curt nod. But I will not
show pain.
Sporting gentlemen do not, for example, wear helmets. If a ball
is aimed at the head, you hook it contemptuously to the fence.
This is what made the British Empire what it is today. “Over
the top, lads, on my whistle…”
Americans do not understand this and, admittedly, this policy
does not win strategic corporate wars. But, my God, the feeling of
superiority it engenders…
Thus the ruling classes were destroyed, which paved the way for Clement
Attlee, Harold Wilson and other frightful oiks. It made the
British Empire what it is today, but romantically. Many fine
novels emerged because of it. There are worse ways for an Empire
to die. Plundered and pillaged by Huns, for example.
- There is not a lot of difference between Cleveland, Ohio, and
Corpus Christi, Texas; neither is a place I want to be.
- “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.”—Hanlon’s Razor
- To any cultivated reader, seeing an “it’s” where
there should be an “its” is akin to hearing a
fingernail scraping the wrong way down a blackboard, or one’s
lover crying out “Oh, Alberto!” when he ought to be
crying “Louise! Louise!”.
- Australian travellers hack around the world supremely
confident they will be welcomed, adored and admired; that their
peccadillos will be seen as quirky and charming. There is no reason
for this, except that it seems to be true.
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