Monday, August 17, 2009

"… of your dreams"

When I listen to the radio or watch TV, I often hear that something is "of your dreams". Yet it is almost never something that I dream about. The car of your dreams : I can't ever remember dreaming of a car; ditto for house or TV or vacation.

Most of my dreams are action dreams; usually I am a hero or a hero sidekick where we defeat the evil forces of evil. I remember dreaming about our youngest son after he died; often asking him wasn't he dead & he assuring me that he wasn't; a dream that often lasted shortly after I woke.

But I guess I am not the audience that the commercials are for.

“Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.” James Dean

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Napoleon Hill

“Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream-world into reality.” Henry David Thoreau

Acts 2:17
AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,' God says,
'THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND;
AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY,
AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS,
AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS

dream (n) a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep • [in sing. ] a state of mind in which someone is or seems to be unaware of their immediate surroundings
• a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal
(v)1 experience dreams during sleep • indulge in daydreams or fantasies, typically about something greatly desired
2 [with negative ] contemplate the possibility of doing something or that something might be the case
ORIGIN Middle English : of Germanic origin, related to Dutch droom and German Traum, and probably also to Old English drēam [joy, music.]

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Onion

I subscribe to The Onion podcasts via ITunes. They had an interesting one a few days ago. It was talking about ways to reduce the national debt. One (linked above) a phony coupe and another using the gold reserves to go to a Money4Gold site.

The Onion (for those who don't know) is a satirical news organization. At least they have some ideas unlike a certain president I know of!

“People say satire is dead. It's not dead; it's alive and living in the White House.” Robin Williams

“You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.” Art Buchwald

“Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen”
Mary Worley Montagu

SATIRE, (n) An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well --
Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
Barney Stims (DD)