A-Z "Topic Of The Day"

[notsmokinjo]

Grandma S ...  the woman had 10 kids of her own and took in 8 more and I was a teen before I knew we weren't all blood..... bloody legend who loved you just the way you were and tended to have the softest spot for the roughest diamonds.

[Sslip]

Stephen Hawking

[notsmokinjo]

Ironman

[Sslip]

Joan of Arc

 

[notsmokinjo]

Martin Luther King.... it had to be said.

[Sslip]

Liu Xiaobo

[notsmokinjo]

^^^ brilliant choice and a true hero.

 

ok this is a double header...

 

Keith Murdock & Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett

Between the two of them (one aussie journalist and one pom) they bought about the sacking of Sir Ian Hamilton who was using ANZACs, Canadians, Irish (the mass slaughter of Irish was a big contributing factor and possibly the final straw in the leave up to the Easter Rising) and to a lesser extent the poms at Gallipoli as nothing more than target practice dummies for the Turkish & German machine guns and bayonets...so in a time of war, when these things weren't done they both railed against the machine, protested the mass senslless and pointless slaughter and were instrumental in bringing about an end to the campaign.

[Sslip]

Nelson Mandela and F.W De Klerk

 

It seems wrong to mention one without the other. Apparently a fraught relationship, but their work together achieved great things.

[notsmokinjo]

I get what you mean, and FW de Klerk gets forgotten in the Nelson hype and he was instrumental in a lot that went down for the positive. Imagine going against everything you were bought up to believe and against everything your people held true to effect change... that's courageous, making the unpopular decision for the right reasons.

[notsmokinjo]

Wilfred Owen .... poet who wrote Dulce et Decorum Est. , won the military cross and sadly died a week before armistice day...

 

For those who didn't have a British based English Lit. Education it goes:

Dulce et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 

Notes:

Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by notsmokinjo

[Sslip]

Pikachu - for being the spokesperson extrordinaire for the poor pokemon, who never harmed anyone.

[notsmokinjo]

"Queen" Boudicca ... I know she wasn't really a Queen but she was truly heroic.

[Sslip]

Ludwik Rajchman, credited as the founder of UNICEF.

[notsmokinjo]

Shane Crawford - >300 AFL games, Brownlow Medalist, Grand Final Captain, Hall of Famer ... and Breast Cancer Awareness & Fundraising Superstar

 

So earlier this week someone I know had a rant about footy players not being good for anything and meat heads and never giving back... so amongst the more than a dozen I could rattle off this block stand out from the modern era. He is what's know as a larrikin, not necessarily the smartest cookie in the box, but a bloody good footy player and a bit of a class clown... anyway after he retired Raelene Doyle (Aussie Olympian) came down with breast cancer... so he made a pledge to run from Adelaide to Melbourne (aprox 727km) in the middle of winter to raise money and awareness... what happened you couldn't script... ever country town he ran through people would line the streets, or run with him and not only did he go through a physical challenge but an emotional one.... 3 or 4 years after this... he again gave of himself for this cause... and rode a bike from Melbourne to Perth (3,418km) in just under 3 weeks again in the middle of winter... that is a longer distance than The Tour de France and in much less time.... this man is what a hero is..... and he certainly gave back. The first run nearly broke him as a person, he was so emotionally effected... below is the live footage of him finishing the run, with some snippets of the run itself.

 

 

 

[Sslip]

^^^ Love that Jo, awesome.

 

So the next one is a double up again. although logged under T.

 

John Hume and David Trimble

 

Two men central to the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland.

[notsmokinjo]

^^ That's a goody too... and even in Aus the significance of it being on Good Friday was not lost.

 

With Crawf, how fricking broken was he when he finished... I watched that in a lounge room with about 12 others and even the boys had moist eyes.. not sure if it was worse because we all knew him as the crazy lunatic of the show who would do all the silly stuff for a laugh it was really the first time anyone had ever seen him so serious.

 

 

 

[notsmokinjo]

OK... switcheroo..... and its Sunday (well for a little longer at least)... lets get our slang on...

 

Underoos - Underwear, namely underpants.

[Wee fluffy me]

Vroom vroom - baby slang for car..

[notsmokinjo]

OK... switcheroo..... Secret Pleasure Songs cos were recycling for environment day....

 

 

Witch Doctor -  Giant Toons Re-mix

[notsmokinjo]

hmmm.... thought @Sslip would be all over the secret pleasure songs.... but nope.... well he's got an hour and I'm switcherooing.... or is it just that nothign could out bad my confession above.

 

 

[Sslip]

Or it could be you landed me with the bloody X first up

 

Okay, just so we don't ignore a great subject

 

XTC - Senses working overtime

[notsmokinjo]

But you could have applied Sslip's Algebraic Law of X.... and then had a whole new set of options like X = 5678.. Steps

 

The Only Way Is Up - Yazz

[Sslip]

^^^ I could have done, but I usually only do that as a last resort

 

^^ And why is Yazz a guilty pleasure?

 

The Zutons - Valerie (not guilty because of the song, but because despite liking it, it always associate it with Amy)

[notsmokinjo]

^^ Really I have to explain Yazz as a guilty pleasure??... maybe it had a different acceptance level over there... um.... definitely not an acceptable tune in my circle of bogan heavy metal/c0ck rock/grunginess......an a, an a, an a, ......

 

Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches

[Sslip]

^^^ I don't think Yazz would have been considered a guilty pleasure over here. 

 

The Boxer Beat - Jo Boxers