Quotes: Beer & Triple Mixed Metaphors

A bushel of hops, A barrel of malt, you stir it around with a stick,
the kind of lubrication to make your engine tick.
40 pints of wallop a day will keep away the quacks.
Its only eight and 1/8 a pint and one and six in tax.

-Recipe for beer, as invented by Charlie Mopps in the drinking song

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.
Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.

-Proverbs 31:6-7, King James Version

Come ye, [say they], I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink;
and to morrow shall be as this day, [and] much more abundant.

-Isaiah 56:12

There is no strategy, this is a ping pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar Province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans. They're real lives and we better be damn sure that we know what we're doing, all of us before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder.

-Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) on the “surge”.

Does this count as a triple mixed-metaphor?
(a ping-pong game with beans as balls & a grinder for a table?)

I would respectfully suggest to the President that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a joint and shared responsibility.

-Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), as quoted in todays New York Times.

It's interesting that Mr Specter is being heralded as a great independent Republican, just because he's several times disagreed with the president. In the 90's, he fought for Clinton's impeachment, very much in obedience with the Gingrich party line. Maybe he sees it as more politically savvy to break with the herd against this president, or maybe he just likes to rassle with executive power.

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all that we will know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you and I sigh.

-William Butler Yeats

I think pregnancy used to be considered, you know, like a parasitic growth. I don't mean that people really thought of it that way, but their perception was, 'This is something on autopilot. And I am just holding onto it and then I am going to return it to the library.'

-Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Concieving Risk, Bearing Responsibility

I welcome any more triple mixed metaphors you come across!
The grand-daddy of them all, of course, is from Shakespeare’s most famous monologue:

...Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles...

-Hamlet, III.i

List of Terrifying Movies I have seen recently

It's been a scary week of watching things. Here I try to quantify & qualify my fears.

Pan's Labyrinth

Reasons that it's Terrifying:

-Torture scenes

-Symptoms of Fascism

-Burning Mandrake representing a fetus

-Evil Step-Father

-The guy with the eyes in his hands that's trying to eat you.

-Gothic faun

-Smashing someone's nose with a bottle, & other intense violence

Jesus Camp

Reasons that it's Terrifying:

-George Bush talking

-8-year-old kids with a plastic fetus tied to their hands

-Rev. Ted Haggart smirking at the camera about how he knows you're gay.

-Statistics about Evangelicals in America (there's a lot of them)

-Kids chanting in unison

-A woman yearning for the good old Middle Ages when we could burn "warlocks" like Harry Potter

-Threat of eternal hellfire for unbelievers

-Kids with weird hairstyles

-Fat people

Twin Peaks Season Two (I haven't finished it all yet)

Reasons that it's Terrifying:

-Brain damaged man coming back to life & attacking his wife with an ax.

-Creepy Owls

-The South winning the Civil War

-Evil spirits named Bob

-The giant saying “It is happening again.”

-Laura's father singing Richard Rodgers songs.

-David Duchovy in a dress

-Irrelevant directionless subplots.

Life in the Undergrowth (A.K.A. The Life of Bugs with David Attenborough)

Reasons that it's Terrifying:

-Enormous centipede catching a bat in midair

-A beetle the size of a rat

-Six-foot-long earthworms

-Scorpions stinging each other while mating

-Spiders in Australia that spin three-dimensional webs

-Prehistoric huge dragonflies

-Mayflies (I hate those things)

More to come!

2006 Pictures from Mr Quill

This is a gathering of the Mimosa's Witnesses, a quasi-Religious Sunday Morning drinking society, at my beautiful Berkeley apartment.

“Pining for the Fjords”, at the Zephyr Cove Disc Golf Course

“Could be the great American novel & people haven't had time to figure it out yet” writes Mr Quill (about Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon) in a recent letter - here pictured at the Berkeley Marina.

Emmylou Harris at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Why does she have to have that ridiculous Michael Jackson nose? Well, Mr Jackson claimed (in his famous interview with Martin Bashir) that his nose was the only plastic surgery he's had, & that was so he could “hit the high notes.” Ms Harris's voice has gotten richer over the years, so there goes Michael's logic. My theory is that his father must have castrated him when he was young. That would explain so much. Wait until I'm proven right.

This sign is on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. The Pluto controversy has gotten people almost about as upset as Darfur.

Manichaean Song

A glass of wine in hand, not going left, not going right,

The middle air, he ceases standing nor not standing up,

A stream of yellow liquid pouring from the drooping pewter cup,

And thru the floor he falls into the earthy hellish night.

America! Drink beer! Get sober! There's a drought a-comin'!

The humble bees are swarming toward the cave of our displeasure:

It's justice, karma, rapture, nothing, whatever, measure for measure!

Or maybe they won't come, or we won't know, or just hear them hummin'.

And is he buried in a box, aware, asphyxiated,

His consciousness upon a hill, a beacon & a dragon,

A Worm of Might, terrible, but terrified of the imminent dawn:

His love is like a rainbow after hours, six dreams created.

Well, things might change, & new utopias approaching slowly–

Our sunken cowboy, alive, drunk on datura & puffer-poisons,

Will rise again, rife for the hanging, peace pending the freemasons–

His sword of virtue on the horizon, to fell his inner canopy.

The Scribe of Pennsylvania! The giant lizard of the deists!

Stentorian organ chords accompany this epic duel,

Tiny boys sport around the vendors, old maids serve refried gruel.

I won five dollars, I had bet on eternal damnation for the atheists.

He stands, then crumbles in again, the theater of the senses,

Then he eats some cheese & some grapes & studies the stars,

His horse is bored, always tied up in the stable with those rusty cars,

A line is drawn, we cross it again, ever weakening our defenses.

And when the fascists outlaw opium & herbal tea,

And execute the leader of the Marxist Opposition,

And Feynman discovers an infinite clock & a train that runs on fission,

And the lobbyists for the lumber trade burn a secret plastic tree,–

Then we will shout & sing, then we become the heroes we forgot,

Or at least we'll write long poems crucially criticizing the core of their policy,

And we'll drink whiskey & discuss Eugene V. Debs, & John Denver's legacy,

And I'll canonize my Great-Great-Grandfather, & all that lot.

O screw the Pope! Let's schism & schism & schism! He'll never know!

We'll convert the savages to our American religion of baffling diversities!

Give honorary doctorates to cartoonists at our universities!

For sure the blue whale will still be mating deeper than we'll ever go.

Both he & we reborn as zombies in a mock-Apocalypse,

Our horses, camels, cars bearing flesh & blood & bread & wine,

Into the cinematic sunset, returning Eastward on a perfect latitudinal line,

And Washington we'll prematurely burn, & darken in a fool's eclipse.

E-mails: Responses & Corrections to the Andrew Jackson Grayson Society

From: "Richard R Grayson, MD" <____@doctorgrayson.com>
To: "Sue Welsch" <_____@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Andrew Jackson Grayson
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:53:14 -0600

Sue, it was good to hear from you. Your son's blog is well done and I appreciated the link to my biography of Andrew Jackson Grayson. Truth be known, I harbor a secret fantasy that I am Andrew reincarnated, for I took to writing as if I had known it before. I became editor of my college newspaper. I have attached the beginning of a book called Teshuva, which are memoirs, for James to read. Also a photo of an old painting I found on the web of a clipper ship, the Orpheus, which in 1856 carried my other great grandfather, Aaron Mandelbaum age 18 and his brother Moses to America from Germany. Note that in the bible Aaron and Moses went to the Promised Land. James should know that he is eligible to join his ancestral organizations for the Mayflower, the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. I tell people I own this country and they should pay me rent. Be sure to read everything on my office web site and on my blog for further essays. I am happy James and Scott are interested in our genealogy. My son Dan and I have done a lot of the genealogy jointly since he was in college, so he has a lot of the records also. I have been collecting our genealogy since I was 15 and have mountains of notebooks and old photographs. I have the Grayson line on Ancestral Quest with about 3,500 names starting with Benjamin Grayson of 1778 in North Carolina. So Happy New Year to all, Love Dick

Date:	Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:11:42 +0000 (GMT)
From:	"Rachel Eley" <_______@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject:	Re: O it was lost for ever! and we found it not: The Andrew Jackson Grayson Society
To:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>

Guess so! Only that DJB has finally been staged, if a little abstractly, in 2003 at the NASSR conference. There's a review of it by Mike Bradshaw online but my Athens account isn't fancy enough to give me access to it. (It was published in the European Romantic Review.) This is seems to be the only accessible reference I can find to it. Also, a fact I didn't mention in the map, it wasn't speaking of Mike that possibly helped my case, but of H W Donner, Beddoes' biographer, whom my interview and subsequent tutor Bernard O'Donoghue studied under (I think in Uppsala) and remembered fondly from his student days. I thought about adding another line to my map but it seemed a little... something. I don't know. Mike might be a bit confused by that particular reference to him if he ever stumbled across it though. I like your relative.

r

Date:	Thu, 11 Jan 2007 7:23:40 -0800 (PST)
From:	"Michael Aarons" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	No!
To:	"Sandy James" <________@yahoo.com>

james,

not to be confused with andrew jackson grayson, the 19th century naturalist

mike

"There's no absolutes in life; only in vodka."
-Homicide: Life on the street

The Andrew Jackson Grayson Society

My friend from Wadham College, Oxford, Miss Rachel Eley, may have gotten into the English Literature department at the famous University because of her connection to an obscure late-Romantic poet. Her induction into the halls of scholarship was meeting a friend of her grandfather's, one Michael Bradshaw, both fellows of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society. Her grandfather, Ron Beddoes, was “a descendent of the family of Thomas Lovell Beddoes”. Thomas Lovell Beddoes was a Gothic late-Romantic who experimented in weird abstract neo-Jacobean theater – mostly, one death-obsessed play, Death's Jest-Book, which he obsessively re-wrote for decades until his suicide. It has been called a fore-runner of Absurdist Drama, & hovers hauntingly beside the standard cannon of Romantic Poetry. The TLBS is part drinking club, part dead poet's society. The play has still never been properly staged. It's great, read it! Anyway, talking about her excitement at meeting Mr Bradshaw & holding certain Beddoes relics may have been the greasy rubbing at her college interview.

Well, for years, I've kept that envious dream, of finding an obscure poet in my ancestry. Yesterday, my brother Scott told my mother to google her maternal great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Grayson, & there's an essay about him from 1975 by her cousin Dick, who did the genealogy for that side of the family. (Apparently, my brother spends his time at work googling his dead relatives.) The full article is here if anyone's interested.

He enlisted “as a Sergeant in E company and as Lieutenant in D company 6th Regiment, Indiana Volunteers ” in 1861, & he fought in the bloody battle of Shiloh. Afterward, he worked as a writer for the Madison Courier & Madison Herald, & published several books on his experiences in the Civil War. It seems that many men in that family - his brother Salathiel & their sons - were in the printing trade in Madison from the '60s thru '80s.

Dick Grayson writes he found four books (in 1975) in the Indiana State Library – an early work, two books on the American Civil War, & a collection of essays for the Madison papers. Dick also selected some excerpts from his writing. Hardly proto-Absurdist verse:

"I never hear that bell ring but what I think of the Whedon boys and Andy McManaman, the old time railroaders in Madison's palmy days. When the new regime came about, the old time ways were wiped out and you had to carry a watch or get left if you didn't keep a hand or an eye on it."

"Where are the billions of passenger pigeons that in the early fifties annually passed over Madison?...Immense flocks would pass over Madison like a rain-cloud in their migrations, darkening the sun for hours, and breaking down trees by their weight in their roosting places."

I'll tell you where the passenger pigeons went – the last one, Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1st, 1914, fourteen months after Jack Grayson died. Remember that things which seem ubiquitous can disappear forever; Melville may have been the first environmentalist to wonder this, in his chapter “Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? Will He Perish?” A friend of Grayson wrote rhapsodically in his obituary about the death of the sunshine optimist, a humble man who lived long, gave his money away, & ended his days with his family. (This of all things should contrast him to the legacy of Thomas Lovell Beddoes. I propose an Andrew Jackson Grayson drinking society – for mediocre writers who wrote about life, were pawns in major conflicts, & lived to old age.)

"Dear old Jack; his lips are dumb, but his spirit will linger long in the hearts of those who knew and loved him, and will ever bring memories, sweet with hours and days of good cheer and joy, He never searched for the unpleasant things in life, nor recalled sad and sorrowful hours of man's existence. His motto was that of the sun dial; he recorded only the days of sunshine. His friends were legions and their faces that were once wreathed in smiles at the mention of his name were tinged with sorrow and regret when told of his death.

"It may be that his life was not a success as the world views it, for he filled not his coffers with silver and gold to be cast on the threshold of eternity, nor strove for power that passes away like perfume of early dawn; he built no monument of brick and mortar to perpetuate his name, as if to mock the living God, but leaves an inheritance rich with good humor and full of sunshine which neither summer's sun nor winter's blast can decay."

Two things on Charles Mason & Jeremiah Dixon

For all of those taking the same journey as Mr Quill & me, there is a very rough, incomplete Wiki on Pynchon's pre-postcolonialist epic: http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Also, the below-referenced Mr Darren Southworth gave me a stack of cds six months ago, several of which finally made it into my computer. Among them was Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia, a 2000 solo album from the Dire Straits singer. Lo, the titular song is based on Pynchon's characters. I'll quote the lyrics in full here - the argumentative tone is appropriate, even if when sung in the song it is sweet & complacent. (James Taylor plays Mason).

I am Jeremiah Dixon
I am a Geordie boy
A glass of wine with you, sir
And the ladies I'll enjoy
All Durham and Northumberland
Is measured up by my own hand
It was my fate from birth
To make my mark upon the earth...

He calls me Charlie Mason
A stargazer am I
It seems that I was born
To chart the evening sky
They'd cut me out for baking bread
But I had other dreams instead
This baker's boy from the west country
Would join the Royal Society...

We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line

Now you're a good surveyor, Dixon
But I swear you'll make me mad
The West will kill us both
You gullible Geordie lad
You talk of liberty
How can America be free
A Geordie and a baker's boy
In the forests of the Iroquois...

Now hold your head up, Mason
See America lies there
The morning tide has raised
The capes of Delaware
Come up and feel the sun
A new morning has begun
Another day will make it clear
Why your stars should guide us here...

We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line

Mr Quill, Mr Southworth, & Ms Murphy inside the Boston Globe, pretending an indifference to Melville's tomb.

Three of my bosom friends were quoted in the paper at an event at which many of us have previously made appearances, often for the full duration. Mr. Quill claims he was "misrepresented." (obviously, he may have been among the truest enthusiasts there - unless you read his famous tone into the quote.)

Ahab's apostles

Reeled in by the writing in 'Moby-Dick,' devoted fans give a whale of a reading

By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | January 5, 2007

NEW BEDFORD -- Call them Melville diehards.

They are the ragtag group of " Moby-Dick " enthusiasts who gather each year in the shadow of a whale's skeleton to read for at least 24 hours about the elusive prey of Captain Ahab. The experience, they say, is almost spiritual.

They are young graduate students and aging retirees, descendants of whalers -- some are even descendants of the author -- or they have merely fallen in love with a text that has been called one of the most dense and quixotic of American literature.

When the annual read-a-thon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum started at noon Wednesday, some 400 had showed up for the famous opening line, "Call me Ishmael." By 1 p.m. yesterday, the crowd had thinned to just dozens . They took turns reading aloud, drank grog, ate chowder, and celebrated the anniversary of Herman Melville's departure from the city more than 160 years ago on the whaler Acushnet, a voyage thought to have formed ideas for his most enduring book.

"There are very well-educated people who did not love it in high school," said Lee Heald , the museum's vice president for education. "But here's the deal: 19th -century literature is so gorgeous. The way to read 'Moby-Dick' is to hear it aloud. It's two stories. It's a great maritime narrative, but it's also a story of good and bad and dark and light."

Not all those in attendance were drawn to the event by the text's finer points, however.

"I think it was just the bragging rights that brought us," said James Quill , 24, who grew up in Concord. This year's event went on for 25 hours, trying some of the most ardent fans, who went home to nap and returned later.

Quill and his two companions, Maralena Murphy , 24, and Darren Southworth , 25, were determined to stay until the last word was uttered. Southworth, who said he has avoided the book "like the plague" since he forced himself to finish it in high school, acknowledged that he was riveted when he heard the expressive readers recite the text.

"It makes a world of difference," he said.

The dramatic reading s were not enough to occupy his attention through the night, though. At one point, Southworth crocheted to keep himself awake. Murphy knitted. "I finished a glove," she said proudly.

The marathon began 11 years ago, when museum volunteer Irwin Marks suggested an event that would commemorate Melville's departure from New Bedford on Jan. 3, 1841. Hundreds of readers have signed up since then to take on a chapter of the 400 plus-page book, including professors, high school students, and high-profile politicians such as US Representative Barney Frank .

This year, the coveted first chapter was read by one of Melville's descendants, a Cohasset carpenter named Peter Whittemore , who recalled playing with the author's spectacles as a child.

"My maternal grandmother was his granddaughter," he said, "so I sat on the lap of the lady who sat on [Melville's] lap."

He said he felt no pressure reading his great-great-grandfather's words, even the renowned first line. "It feels like it's in my blood," Whittemore said. "I start reading and I get caught up."

Some, in their nervousness, may stumble over the words. Others, inspired by the tale, wow the spectators with their fine, clear diction.

"That's what I call good reading," murmured one spectator listening to Celeste Bernardo , 43, confidently describe Ahab's final chase of the whale.

But it is the book's thrilling last chapter, when Ahab goes down with his ship, that rattles the most experienced reader. Dana Westover , a sound technician who read the final chapter yesterday, chastised himself for using the wrong voice to recite the final speech by Starbucks, the ship's first mate.

"I read it in Ahab's voice," he said, shaking his head. "I should have known better. Well, whatever. It was fun."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

E-mails: New Years Blogolutions

Date:	Mon, 25 Dec 2006 13:44:42 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Fucking
To:	"Samuel Tear Amidon" <_______@gmail.com>

Dear Sam,

Hey, I was able to get that "I wish" movie onto my fancy new video iPod (xmas present from dad) using a program called "Jodix Free iPod Video Converter". Then we hooked it up to my parents new humungous television set (they're all the rage with the consumer set), & got your face ten feet wide. My mother didn't like what you were doing with lips. It's the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY!

Anyway, I was writing to suggest that you convert your movies to .m4a & post them on your website in that format also, so people can put them on iPods. All your fans that is, like Matthew Fucking Barney & The Gay-Emo Boys & the Fucking Cockassaroos.

Where's your manners! Merry Christmas!

When's Sam Amidon Live in Berkeley? You should come play the Starry Plough. My brother told me he puts your Tears for Fears song on his mixes. He lives in a bus now. You're big with the bus set. You're also TEN FEET WIDE on my parents' TV.

Peace on Earth,

James

Date:	Mon, 1 Jan 2007 23:19:46 -0500
From:	"Sam Amidon"
To:	"James Welsch"
Subject:	Re: Fucking

yo yo

marry christmas. i am in vermont. i am hung over from new years eve.
i mean not so much any more but i was today. new years eve was about
welcoming in 2007. hmmm... today has been about being hungover in
2007. thank you for expanding my video into the television medium. i
am watching a lame indie movie called down in the valley. before that
i was watching an beautiful hollywood film called dead man's chest.
that was good. i'm sick of stupid shit, and flakey stuff, and i'm not
sure what is going to happen this year yet. what do you think? but on
the good side of things marian gave me an old, hardcover, unabridged
copy of gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire. that is
worthwile.

sam

Date:	Sun, 7 Jan 2007 10:45:11 -0500
From:	"Sam Amidon" <___________@gmail.com>
To:	"James Welsch" <________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Ahab's apostles
CC:	"James Quill" <___________@yahoo.com>

yeah quill!!! good man rock i'm lame because i didn't go this year. but i will next year. in the meantime...

my new years resolutions.
by sam.

-sleep more
-talk more
-read more new yorker articles

my new reading scheme.
by sam

on the subway:
the short novels of leo tolstoy

on the weekends:
the decline and fall of the roman empire, by gibbon, in six volumes.

going to bed:
anna karenina

over breakfast: war and peace

Date:	Sun, 7 Jan 2007 11:58:57 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	My Reading Scheme,
To:	"Sam Amidon" <__________@gmail.com>

Dear Sam,

Ah! What readers we are! La!

Your reading plans are impossible. Just one of those would be hard.

I wrote to James Quill that I was at the point in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon where the french chef is being haunted by a robotic duck who may or may not be slowly turning into either an angel or a planet. & wrote back & said he was at the exact same point. (We had never mentioned that book to each other, never mentioned any plans to read it...)

Some day I'll start reading Russian novels. I'm still paranoid that I'm fabulously behind on great American literature. Mason & Dixon is amazing. Like, yesterday in a coffee shop, I read this chapter where Dixon (the astronomer/surveryor charting out the Mason-Dixon line in the 1760s) stumbles into a rustick tavern in the woods inn Pennsylvania, & the locals launch into a bizarre discussion of the gnostic gospels & how the Mason-Dixon line is like a line of Hebrew Scripure, & how this monster ("Golem") Indian spirit in the woods is animated by Jesus & can be summoned by great poetry "somewhat as ye may summon a Star with a Telescope".

Peace On Earth!
Purity Of Essence!

James

Date:	Wed, 3 Jan 2007 20:45:07 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch"
Subject:	"Garden of Pleasure" paging the Vibe Master
To:	<________@gmail.com>

Dear Dan "Communism" Piper.

Well, my mother informed me over Christmas that since moving to Berkeley (three months ago!) I have become "too liberal." It was in response to me telling her the dairy industry is a slave trade. Can't say I'm a communist, but, if you have $230, I suggest you drag your butt to Lincoln Center in New York & watch all three of Tom Stoppard's trilogy "The Coast of Utopia." By February, there should be some 8-hour marathons going on.

I tried to call you a bit ago, to ask what was going on in Israel - but I've been listening to Amy Goodman, & I think I'm more up to date. I may just hide for a few years. Speaking of which, January 25th, 2009, Edinburgh / Ayreshire! That'll be several things: James Quill's 27th Birthday, Robert Burns's 250th birthday (hence the Scottish location), & 5 days after Bush leaves office (at the latest), so by default a several-week all-world party.

MySpace friends! I sent you a request for my music page. I have a new Gospel Album, Gospel Train.

New! Year!
James

Gospel Train on YouTube

From the Archive: Holy Sonnet IV

The waters compassed me about, I was
Within a great within; the deep surrounded
Like out the closing maw of hell, compounded
Extract my soul as high abstraction does.
All radiant dolphins lost their lust for life
When they nor life nor lust without beheld:
The faith of pleasure is experiential.
They long to bear, as does the heaven's wife,
And to deliver, once the sea has swelled
Its mystic womb, relief to belief sensual.
From out the whale did vomit my potential
Imagination, that the forms withheld.
I am, as sailor's home is dirty ground,
A hidden treasure wanting to be found.

Robert Burns on YouTube

"Drink beer!
There's a drought comin' on!"
-Crazy lady on the BART, towards Walnut Creek
(where I was headed for undisclosed reasons),
3 January 2007

"The Indians!
Get sober!
America!
Love it or leave it!
I'm leavin'!"
-ibid.