Better and Sublime

HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS RATHER fanciful image of a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger? Because yes I think I am better! And I ate one last night (though it was nowhere near as ripe and towering as the image suggests...) ... also, being part of the "poundsaver" menu those cost £1.19 here (up from 99p) which translates as $2.50 at the worst exchange rate... somewhere around $2.15 now (I think...)

Is it true in America they cost just $1~?!? For a double cheeseburger, that is..?

Wow. How come EVERYTHING seems to be cheaper State"side"..?

I have consumed 1x500ml can cyder 7.5%ABV today, 1x500ml Coca Cola and 1xplate MSG-style eggfried rice... plus I know I shouldn't have done this but I was thirsty: I drank a litre of value orange juice and suffered no worse effects than some slight bloating. All the guttering gurgling inner mud-boiling gallumphing has gone and thank God! Hurrah!!

(The skylark you'll see why if you scroll down to the "pome" at the bottom; the micromys minutus European harvest mouse I just put in because it looks cute ...

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I NOTICED MY THREE GREMLINS all up and zipping about at midday today. Their bodyclocks have become confused by my proclivity for hiding them under a bedsheet during daylight hours (from Evilstein's prying eyes) and opening them up to common gaze at night. Which means, being contrary little swines that they are, they've taken to sleeping at night and waking up by daytime which in Outer Mongolia, where they come from, would surely get them killed.

Anyway imagine my surprise when I suddenly witnessed a parmesan tube dancing about of its own accord. Standing in before it, ears up like a transfixed Porkshire terrier was Itchy. I have never seen her in a state of such astonishment. Turned out Spherical had got her head stuck while climbing in and was shaking the entire tub up and down in a hilarious attempt to remove it ...(!)

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Now:~ speaking of sublime things, here is the dead poet Shelley's yodel; sorry "ode" to a tweetling birdie:~~

To a Skylark

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert—
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-wingèd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers—
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

by Percy "Bushy" Shelley

Videos:
1. Mozart: Requiem
2. Mozart: Requiem Tranced Up