The Grey

Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I'll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day

gandhi... again

"the weak can never forgive, forgiveness is the attribute of the strong"

Teddy

courage is not about having the strength to go on.. it is going on when you do not have the strength

"people wanna believe god has a plan for them; they dont want to know that anyone else does" - Percy, Nikita

Gandhi

you must show courage - be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show you will not strike back nor will you be turned aside.  And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me, then they will have my dead body. NOT MY OBEDIENCE!

Of friends, songs and things

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Extracted from: http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

Stargate

"the success or the failure of your deeds does not add up to the sum of your life;
the universe is vast and we are so small
there is only one thing we can ever truly control..
whether we are good or evil" - Stargate SG-1

"enemies promises were made to be broken" - Stargate SG-1

"the interesting thing about sceptics is that we are always looking for proof" - the rite

"a hero is made in the moment" - unknown

"beware of men and their destinies" - unknown

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." - Cersei Lannister

You see what I've seen, you come and go as I have... you realize the most important thing about death isn't who dies.. it's who kills them - Willow in Buffy, S8

If you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got. While what I got was alright, now, I'm looking for something more. - Adapted from NCIS

WHY LIES ARE BETTER THAN THE TRUTH

WHY LIES ARE BETTER THAN THE TRUTH
(A SCIENTIFIC COMPARISON TEST)

From THE RAPE OF THE APE, BY Allen Sherman
Chicago, Playboy Press, 1973
Pps 56-59

I. Credibility

All Lies are designed to seem true.  The expert liar carefully uses elements that seem probable and logical and are therefore easy to believe.  On the other hand, The Truth is often illogical, wildly improbable and hard to explain.

Lies are more believable than the truth.

II. Reliability

The Truth is spontaneous, accidental, and unpredictable.  Lies, however, can be planned in detail long in advance and are thus guaranteed to turn out as predicted.

Lies are more dependable than The Truth.

III. Economy

To be The Truth, an account of a given event must be completely accurate.  This requires painstaking resourcefulness, expensive research, time-consuming attention to detail, complex logistics and thoroughness.  In spite of all that, some people will believe it and others will not.  A Lie will produce identical results without all the fuss and bother.

Lies are simpler than Truth: Lies cost less than Truth in time, money, and effort.

IV. Value

The Truth can be found anywhere; it belongs to anybody who finds it,
absolutely free.  Lies are custom-made, often by experts, and the best ones are highly polished works of art.

Lies are worth more money than Truth.  Have you ever heard of anyone bribing a witness to tell The Truth?

V. Respectability

A. Great fortunes have been made by selling Lies to the public.  The people who sell these Lies are often grateful to the gullible customers, so they endow libraries and universities and cultural centers.

B. Nobody ever made a fortune selling The Truth.  First of all, as already stated, The Truth is free.  The only people who will pay money for The Truth are people who are being blackmailed--and they are only buying The Truth so they can hide it before anybody else sees it.

Lies lead to libraries and universities, while The Truth leads to blackmail.

VI. Stability

A. Take a thousand parts Truth, add one part Lie.  Result: a lie.

B. Take one thousandth part lie, add one part Truth.  Result: again a Lie.

C. Note that you can make a Lie out of Truth, but you can’t make The Truth out of a Lie.

Lies are stronger and last longer than The Truth.

VII. Imagination

In reporting The Truth, a person must research the precise facts and stick to them exactly as they occurred.  The liar can report the same incident without doing any research, merely saying whatever comes to mind and filling in details according to his fancy.

Lies are more creative than The Truth.

VIII.  Recognizability

People are accustomed to hearing Lies all the time.

If you tell The Truth, people will think you are lying.  If you convince
them you are telling The Truth, they will become suspicious.  Why is he
suddenly telling The Truth?  What is going on?

IX. Supply and Demand

A. In describing any given incident, only one version can possibly be The Truth, whereas the number of Lies possible is unlimited.  Obviously, Lies are in far greater supply than The Truth.

B. There is a great demand for Lies, if they are flattering, if they build
up one’s hopes, if they help one escape reality or if they promise health
wealth, power or potency.  Nobody is very anxious to hear The Truth.  The only people who demand The Truth are those who are investigating something (lawyers, etc.)--and they only want The Truth to prove someone is lying.

Lies are the acceptable medium of exchange in our society.  They are in good supply and the demand for them remains strong.  The Truth is in extremely short supply, but even this tiny supply far exceeds the demand.  Thus, in our society, Truth occupies a position identical to that of dinosaur shit.

Conclusions:

Lies are superior to Truth in numerous ways.
Lies are more ingenious;
Lies make the world seem more pleasant;
Lies are less embarrassing than Truth; and less frightening.
Furthermore, in such fields are diplomacy, statesmanship, merchandising, advertising, public relations and bookkeeping, The Truth is an out-and-out handicap.

In friendship, Truth is harmful; in love, it is disastrous.

My prediction is that The Truth will be phased out of our society, almost unnoticed, in less than a generation.  It will become a curio like the two-dollar bill.  Probably, there will be museums where samples of The Truth will be displayed for the benefit of curious children who want to know what it was like.  One can only hope that the curators of these Truth Museums will have the good taste not to fake the exhibitions.

The Truth is that The Truth has become old-fashioned.  It’s full of odd
shaped little nooks and crannies, like so many old fashioned things, some people find them fascinating, but most people find them a pain in the neck.  For those who care, it is a wonderful feeling to hold The Truth in your possession, to keep it and cherish it, never misuse it, then pass it along freely to anyone who wants it, giving it to them undamaged, unpainted, unadded to and unsubtracted from and every bit as glowingly alive as ever.  To find all those joys in the handling of The Truth is a labor of love, but most of us in today’s society have no time for such things.

Assorted Pieces

“Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do, will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, will never...never forget it.” - Curtis Judalet

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.” - Emerson

John Connor: [choking on tear gas]
John Connor: Just leave me here. I'm not the one you want. You're wasting your time.
Terminator: Incorrect. John Connor leads the resistance to victory.
John Connor: How? Why? Why me?
Terminator: You are John Connor.
John Connor: Christ! My mom fed me that bullshit since the cradle! Look at me! I'm no leader! I never was! I'm never gonna...
John Connor: [is choked by Terminator]
John Connor: Let go!
Terminator: You're right. You're not the one I want. I'm wasting my time.
John Connor: Fuck you, you fucking machine!
Terminator: [releases John] Better.
John Connor: What, you were just dicking with me?
Terminator: Anger is more useful than despair.
John Connor: What?
Terminator: Basic psychology is among my sub-routines

(FF7) Godo Kisaragi: Strength without determination means nothing, and determination without strength is equally useless.

LOST:

Sayid: If we tell them what we know, we take away their hope... and hope is a very dangerous thing to lose.
Kate: So we lie.

"Jack, I wish you had believed me. JL" - Locke