The Give Nil Something Pretty to Read on His Bday Thread

[livius drusus]

I know some other forum which will remain nameless already has a birthday thread for you, but since we have the killer smilies, I figure our thread will be way prettier.

So, without further ado:

:appl: :wishes: :linedance: :prezzie::lift: :torte: :birthday: :blowout: :balloons: :apresent: :party: :surprise: :balloon: :appl:

We're :cheer: for you, Chris, sending you all the :vibes: we've got as well as some decent mail (including this thread when the day is over). You're going to have to fend off a hundred :glomp2: when you get back. Maybe you can get Jamie to be your bodyguard and film her fending us all off. That would be pretty :pant:.

Have a good birthday. We're thinking about you. Stay as safe as you can and come back soon. :hug:

[Ex-zombie]

:lift: Happy Birthday, Nil! :balloons:

[viscousmemories]

Happy Birthday, Chris! Here's a 10 random smilie story for you. :)

I was on a plane to :gambia: (Gambia), when some little :headbang: from the Midwest stepped on my toes to get to the aisle. On his way to the bathroom he encountered a flight attendant pushing the food cart :pointless:, and he simply buried his face in it and started munching. :homer:

When he had his fill, he asked someone if this was the plane to :japan:. As a joke, the person told him "No, this is the plane to :slovenia: (Slovenia). Stunned, he stumbled to the bathroom door and knocked, shouting "Open up you toilet-nazi, I have to go!". :doordate:

The person inside opened the door :beaugest: and accused him of invoking :godwin:

:nicethread:

I hope you're doing okay, Chris. Take care of yourself. :)

[Noodlenader]

Happy birthday, baby! <3 I'm sending my good thoughts exactly 43miles west of me ;)

[Petra]

Happy Birthday, Chris!

You're a poetry man, so I'll post a couple of poems you might enjoy as my good birthday reading offer:

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Two Countries
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.


A Lemon
by Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

A Supermarket in California
by Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?




Okay, so it was more than a couple - I got carried away, and it was hard to stop. :blush:


But....HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

:birthday:

[livius drusus]

Great idea, luna. :)

http://www.lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/ermine.jpg

Lady with Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci

[Petra]

Oooh, pictures! :cool:


Vedute Di Roma Antica
by Giovanni Paolo Panini

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/TOP/AA535.jpg

I and the village
by Marc Chagall

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/APP/chagall268.jpg


...Oh, I could post so many! :bow:

[maddog]

Happy birthday, baby! <3 I'm sending my good thoughts exactly 43miles west of me ;)
I GOTTA get new glasses :foggy: ; I thought you were saying you were sending 43 smilies west.

Unny-hoo,
Happy Birthday, Chris. Life is an amazing journey. Some of the stops are less interesting, perhaps, than others, but there is nothing from which learning does not come. "No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity," as Jane Olivor (I liked her version better than Whitney Houston's) sang. Viktor Frankl (one of my heroes; maybe somebody will copy the "heroes" thread to you) also made his most brilliant discoveries in trying circumstances. You are loved and remembered.

Well, it isn't 43 smilies, but here's a "random 10-smilie story" for you:

Once upon a time, there was a :belly: in a nightclub in :kiribati: .
:cthulhu: came in, wearing :bermuda: shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He was on vacation. He decided to :taiwan: on, however, and proceeded to have numerous drinks. He became frisky. He sidled up to the :belly: and said, "Hey, baby, what's :suriname: ?" She slapped him with her cymbals until he turned into a :angry: ; he sauntered off to the casino. At the roulette table, he lost big. Infuriated, and :shakefist: , he hollered, " :cheetah: !!" Then he picked up his remaining chips and stomped out. The next morning he had a hangover so big, he found himself :bow2: before the porcelain goddess, wishing he could remember, "what was :suriname: ?"

And now for something completely different: :hugs: :wishes: :surprise:
#62

[wildernesse]

I wanna ermine.

Here are wishes :wizard: for a good birthday! Sending good thoughts your way!

[livius drusus]

Okay, Chris, this is a big one. I present for your reading pleasure a report I wrote about a field trip in 3rd grade, dated February 20, 1980 (original syntax preserved lovingly by my sainted mother).

~~~

Ostia Antica

The first thing we did was ride the bus and then we got off the bus. We had a snack and ran around.

Then we went to see the old, old ruins. Then we saw the museum, and there were foot prints and mosaics. They were very pretty.

There were statues that were very elegant (to the Romans). We same old fashioned jewelry that was not bad.

Then we saw the underground refrigerators that were not at all very pretty, but very big and useful.

Chanda, Renete and Sarah and me found a secret passage way that was fun to go through. After that we went to the theater and had a tiny play of Rumpelstiltskin that I enjoyed best because I was the star of the play. Everyone watched it.

Then the 5th graders had a few plays and the one that I liked best the THE GHOST OF THE BLOODY FINGERS.

Soon all the plays were finished and we went back to the bus and went back to old Marymount.

THE END

~~~

So now you know what a total narcissistic bitch I was even from a very young age. Happy Birthday! :D

[freemonkey]

How do you feel about purple?

http://p.webshots.com/ProThumbs/76/47276_wallpaper280.jpg
Mirrored Serenity, Hood Canal, Seabeck, Washington by Don Paulson (a very talented friend of mine)

Happy Birthday!