Today, November 5, started with a fog over the River Thames. The day may be the start of a clearer era in America; in England, where it’s Guy Fawkes Bonfire Day, it is the start of a second coronavirus lockdown, to run for four weeks at least. To Thomas Hood’s 1844 poem “No”–
No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day,
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! –
November!
– we can now add:
No pubs, no restaurants, no partying,
No hope of profit, fun, or company until December!
More Cheerful Thoughts Department
It’s been suggested that I issue “Guy’s Tips for the Day,” since I’m prone to coming out with observations such as “If you close your eyes while eating, you’ll enjoy the food even more.” Very well:
If you take a drink of, say, apple juice, and balloon your cheeks out before you swallow it, the liquid seems to multiply three or four or five times in quantity, so that your enjoyment of it mutiplies as much.
(Another observation: “More Cheerful Thoughts…” is an example of an ambiguity that English is incapable of resolving, and that couldn’t happen in Esperanto.)
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
No — more Mars at 20″ or more until 2033 :( It has been an excellent apparition thus far; I don’t think dust storms obscured the views as in 2018.
To avoid tooth decay, I only consume sucrose every 3 months. My favorite sucrose treat is chocolate so I eat a small piece of chocolate every 3 months. Due to the rarity of my chocolate indulgence, I try to extract the maximum pleasure when I do eat it. After the first bite I found that sniffing it while eating it magnifies its flavor. Next time I’ll take your advice and sniff it with my eyes closed and cheeks puffed out. I assume that puffing out your cheeks increases the intra-oral pressure so that more molecules enter the taste buds.
“an example of an ambiguity” in English is that of November 5 you said, “The day may be the start of a clearer era in America,” and I checked to find that President Trump was not yet re-elected nor former Vice President Biden elected. So the political weather remains murky here, though one may hope for the continued dawning of the era of the last four years, no?
I’m sorry to hear of your further lockdown. Things are freeing up a lot here in the Southern Hemisphere as we enter summer.
pli da felicxaj pensoj, kontrau pli-felicxaj pensoj, cxu?
Gxuste.
What?
It’s Esperanto (haven’t thought about that in many years) – something like: more happy thoughts or happier thoughts, which?
and – genau, akkurat (exactly)
Is that almost right?
Add:
Dr. No
Ave atque vale.