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empallinmy mothra forwarded this to me and i am sharing it because i thought it was cute. and because it kinda sounded like something i would do. i am not really sure why the second part was attached to it but i do like that as well. although i did have to stop myself from adding smart ass comments to each of the things. it just the way we do things here. i really agree with a lot of it. yeah i removed all the bullshit about forwarding it to x amount of people etc.
The Yellow shirt
The baggy yellow shirt had long sleeves, four extra-large pockets trimmed in black thread and snaps up the front. It was faded from years of wear, but still in decent shape. I found it in 1963 when I was home from college on Christmas break, rummaging through bags of clothes Mom intended to give away. "You're not taking that old thing, are you?" Mom said when she saw me packing the yellow shirt. "I wore that when I was pregnant with your brother in 1954!"
"It's just the thing to wear over my clothes during art class, Mom. Thanks!" I slipped it into my suitcase before she could object. The yellow shirt became a part of my college wardrobe. I loved it. After graduation, I wore the shirt the day I moved into my new apartment and on Saturday mornings when I cleaned.
The next year, I married. When I became pregnant, I wore the yellow shirt during big-belly days. I missed Mom and the rest of my family, since we were in Colorado and they were in Illinois. But that shirt helped. I smiled, remembering that Mother had worn it when she was pregnant, 15 years earlier. That Christmas, mindful of the warm feelings the shirt had given me, I patched one elbow, wrapped it in holiday paper and sent it to Mom. When Mom wrote to thank me for her "real" gifts, she said the yellow shirt was lovely. She never mentioned it again.
The next year, my husband, daughter and I stopped at Mom and Dad's to pick up some furniture. Days later, when we uncrated the kitchen table, I noticed something yellow taped to its bottom. The shirt!
And so the pattern was set.
On our next visit home, I secretly placed the shirt under Mom and Dad's mattress. I don't know how long it took for her to find it, but almost two years passed before I discovered it under the base of our living-room floor lamp. The yellow shirt was just what I needed now while refinishing furniture. The walnut stains added character.
In 1975 my husband and I divorced. With my three children, prepared to move back to Illinois. As I packed, a deep depression overtook me. I wondered if I could make it on my own. I wondered if I would find a job. I paged through the Bible, looking for comfort. In Ephesians, I read, "So use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy whenever he attacks, and when it is all over, you will be standing up."
I tried to picture myself wearing God's armor, but all I saw was the stained yellow shirt. Slowly, it dawned on me. Wasn't my mother's love a piece of God's armor? My courage was renewed.
Unpacking in our new home, I knew I had to get the shirt back to Mother. The next time I visited her, I tucked it in her bottom dresser drawer.
Meanwhile, I found a good job at a radio station. A year later I discovered the yellow shirt hidden in a rag bag in my cleaning closet. Something new had been added. Embroidered in bright green across the breast pocket were the words "I BELONG TO PAT."
Not to be outdone, I got out my own embroidery materials and added an apostrophe and seven more letters. Now the shirt proudly proclaimed, "I BELONG TO PAT'S MOTHER." But I didn't stop there. I zig-zagged all the frayed seams, then had a friend mail the shirt in a fancy box to Mom from Arlington, VA. We enclosed an official looking letter from "The Institute for the Destitute," announcing that she was the recipient of an award for good deeds. I would have given anything to see Mom's face when she opened the box. But, of course, she never mentioned it.
Two years later, in 1978, I remarried. The day of our wedding, Harold and I put our car in a friend's garage to avoid practical jokers. After the wedding, while my husband drove us to our honeymoon suite, I reached for a pillow in the car to rest my head. It felt lumpy. I unzipped the case and found, wrapped in wedding paper, the yellow shirt. Inside a pocket was a note: "Read John 14:27-29. I love you both, Mother."
That night I paged through the Bible in a hotel room and found the verses: "I am leaving you with a gift: peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't fragile like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid. Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again. If you really love me, you will be very happy for me, for now I can go to the Father, who is greater than I am. I have told you these things before they happen so that when they do, you will believe in me."
The shirt was Mother's final gift. She had known for three months that she had terminal Lou Gehrig's disease. Mother died the following year at age 57.
I was tempted to send the yellow shirt with her to her grave. But I'm glad I didn't, because it is a vivid reminder of the love-filled game she and I played for 16 years. Besides, my older daughter is in college now, majoring in art. And every art student needs a baggy yellow shirt with big pockets.
one. give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
two. marry a man/woman you love to talk to. as you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
three. don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
four. when you say, "i love you," mean it.
five. when you say, "i'm sorry," look the person in the eye.
six. be engaged at least six months before you get married.
seven. believe in love at first sight.
eight. never laugh at anyone's dreams. people who don't have dreams don't have much.
nine. love deeply and passionately. you might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.
ten. in disagreements, fight fairly. no name calling.
eleven. don't judge people by their relatives
twelve. talk slowly but think quickly.
thirteen. when someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "why do you want to know?"
fourteen. remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
fifteen. say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.
sixteen. when you lose, don't lose the lesson
seventeen. remember the three r's: respect for self; respect for others; and responsibility for all your actions.
eighteen. don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
nineteen. when you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
twenty. smile when picking up the phone. the caller will hear it in your voice.
twenty-one. spend some time alone.
coming from http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/08/lewis-and-clarke-not-to-mention-snuff.asp...
I don't want to be rude, but when are you going to talk about Cerebus?
Well, it was going to be at length in the same post that I talked about Gene Wolfe's The Wizard and the new Diana Wynne Jones book. But that one hasn't happened yet, mostly because I fell asleep on both of the plane journeys to and from Mythcon, so didn't get the writing time I'd hoped for.
So the long Cerebus post will have to wait. Still, I think it might be a good idea to kickstart the meme from the Cerebus post-that-hasn't-been written yet, and leave out all the stuff around it:
Amongst many other things, in Dave Sim's Cerebus (which is a story that took Dave and his partner-in-art Gerhard 300 issues to tell) he did, in the Women storyline, easily the best parody of Sandman anyone's ever done, as various members of the Cerebus cast of characters become Snuff, Swoon and the rest of the Clueless. It was wickedly funny, and had the author of Sandman curling his toes when he read it.
Dave Sim has made an extremely generous offer to readers of this journal (and indeed, to readers not of this journal, but just people who simply hear about his offer elsewhere on the Internet. Memes propagate, after all), which is the kind of offer that I found as interesting as he did. It's this:
If you'd like to read one of the Sandman parody issues of Cerebus, Dave will send you one. He'll send it to you very happily, free of charge. He will sign it for you, too. And he won't charge you a thing. Not even postage.
And if you're wondering what the catch is, it's this: Dave wants to know (as, I have to admit, do I) how many of the people out there in internet-land will actually go and do things that don't involve passively clicking on a link and going somewhere interesting. So what you have to do is write Dave a letter (not an e-mail. Dave doesn't have e-mail) telling him that you read that he'll send you a signed Cerebus, and telling him why you'd like him to send you a copy. It's as easy as that. And, quite possibly as difficult.
The address to write to is:
Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674 Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2
Dave, I suspect, thinks he'll get a handful of requests. In my more pessimistic moments, I think he's right, although I'd love it if he got deluged with letters, like those kids in hospitals who don't exist but are still collecting postcards...
We have a second-part of the plan too, which involves doing good things for the CBLDF. But that's for later. For now, if you're even mildly curious, write Dave a letter. Tell him you're curious...
(And for those of you who aren't sure if they want to risk having to go and find a stamp, you could go and look at http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/ -- and at http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/stories/stories.html you can even read several Cerebus short stories from Epic Illustrated, or the four pager from Alan Moore and partners' AARGH anthology.)
(But once you've read them, write Dave the letter. Don't forget to put your address on it, or to say why you'd like him to send you a signed Cerebus comic. And feel very very free to pass the word on to the comics news-sites or groups, or just to anywhere that people who might be interested congregate.)
drug me with your fuck machines
i am sure most of you have seen the commercials for all of those new "medications" (avlimil, enzyte, altovis, etc) that are offering free samples if you call or log on to their websites. well i got curious as to what the hell the deal was with them so i went looking.
it is going to come as such a huge surprise that these things are all made and distributed by the same company berkeley premium nutraceuticals. nutraceuticals? what in the living hell is a nutraceutical? oh vitamins you say.
yeah calling these things medications is quite a stretch of the imagination. they are all one big hunk of crap that could very well screw with any legitimate medications you are taking. oh and there is there little disclaimer...
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Enzyte is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Enzyte should be taken as part of a healthy lifestyle and individual results may vary. The individuals shown are paid models, and not necessarily Enzyte customers.
what could make all of that worse? the free sample require you to pay $4.95. thats not free you dumb bastids.
sorry. i had to go off on that a little bit.
