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Thomas the Tank Engine has been sued for sexual harassment by Lady Jane Hatt and her granddaughter Bridgett, who charged that Thomas repeatedly thrust his engine at Lady Hatt suggestively—in addition to making lewd advances at young Bridgett. He also left a thin line of grease on a Coke can.
Three Amish youth–Jacob, Lucas, and Martin Stolzfus–died when the vape pen they had rigged with propane so they could smoke marijuana concentrate exploded.
Retrofitting electric devices from washing machines to dildos so they run on propane is common in Amish communities, where the “pro” in iPad Pro stands for “propane.”
When his self became a fear he couldn’t outrun, he woke his wife, and they drove through the night to comfort him. In those dark hours, they passed closed churches and open cookie shops. Normally he would have said something clever about that fact, but now it only frightened him.
His great joy had always been causing people to choke by saying something funny just as they were taking a sip of beverage. His wife guarded against this amusement, but one night he “got” her, and, indeed, she choked. Several days later, at her funeral, her brother waited, then.
“Yin is passive, introverted—frequently weak. Yang is outgoing and opinionated. She’s happy to stay at home with a book and her cat. He likes to party. Yin keeps their jaijitu (mighty circle) so cold that Yang, who is a real beach lover, constantly wears thick, heavy robes indoors.
“Prognostication poor.”
Liberals can feel guilty without actually sinning. They yearn to change the national anthem to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” They’ll take your money and give it to LGBTQ1A++, BLM, and other members of the alphabet mafia. Liberal women have dainty moustaches. Liberal men, pony tails and male pattern baldness.
The Tao Te Ching, a venerated book of Chinese wisdom, has endured for more than 2,500 years despite the fact nobody has really figured out what it means yet. The last person who spoke the Chinese dialect in which the Tao was written died in a single-cart accident during the Three Sovereigns Around the Moon dynasty (345-287 BCE).The fact that nobody knows what Lao Tzu, the eighty-some-year-old author of the Tao, was talking about hasn’t stopped people from pretending that they understand the Tao; nor has it stopped people from pretending that their pretend understanding of the Tao helps them to understand other things they don’t really understand either, things like physics, rugby, the stock market, and the block chain.
The first step to understanding the Tao without actually reading it is learning how to pronounce it correctly and to correct anyone who doesn’t: dow-deh-jing. Next is memorizing what Tao Te Ching means. Tao means “way”; Te means “virtue”; and Ching means “text.”
Because Chinese is often spoken, as well as read, right to left, feel free to use those words in any order that you like when pontificating about the Tao. You can call it “The text of the virtuous way,” or “The virtuous text of the way,” or “The text of the way of virtue.” Remember, this is Chinese. Do we have to draw you a picture?
The Tao comprises 81 short “chapters” or “verses.” The over/under for first-time readers is the twenty-first chapter. If you get further than that, you’ve done better than most. We’re probably not going to get that far. What we are going to do is explain the meanings of a dozen or so verses of the Tao, beginning with the first. That should enable you to hijack the conversation whenever the Tao is mentioned.
1.
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Now we can see why the last person who spoke this dialect drove his ox cart into a tree. What is the old boy going on about? Is he musing about the difference between proper and common nouns? Does he mean to say that everything that has a name is not real? Or that everything real doesn’t have a name, so we don’t know what to call it, much less what it is, therefore we spell it with a capital letter? Of course! But the take-away is this: you can understand only that which you do not desire; you should not want that which you already understand. The key to happiness is learning to fight darkness with darkness.
To be continued. Last one out turn off the lights.
1.
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Now we can see why the last person who spoke this dialect drove his ox cart into a tree. What is the old boy going on about? Is he musing about the difference between proper and common nouns? Does he mean to say that everything that has a name is not real? Or that everything real doesn’t have a name, so we don’t know what to call it, much less what it is, therefore we spell it with a capital letter? Of course! But the take-away is this: you can understand only that which you do not desire; you should not want that which you already understand. The key to happiness is learning to fight darkness with darkness.
To be continued. Last one out turn off the lights.
The only birthday cards that Edward received were from three creditors and his parole officer. “Why let other people’s preoccupations with their lives spoil the party?” he thought. He sent himself an anonymous e-mail, agreed to meet the sender for dinner, and wasn’t shy about sex on the first date.
Billy hated mimes. He loved poking fun at (shadowing) them until one day a vindictive mime replaced Billy’s shadow with a copy of his. After several embarrassing daylight incidents and a near arrest on obscenity charges, Billy began going out only at night. Soon he stopped going out at all.
Screen name Commander or Princess.
Wants to meet in PetSmart.
Measures height to shoulders.
Asks how old you are in dog years.
Thinks computer’s “pause” button is misspelled.
Asks if you’re fixed.
Avoids exchanging photos.
Re-roofed summer house for $100.
Can’t understand fuss about quintuplets.
Too interested in e-mailman’s schedule.