“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Thus concludes my guest-hosting week at EDSBS, which was more fun and went more smoothly than I could’ve possibly hoped for — thanks in large part to your First Officer, Holly; our devoted and on-the-ball tipsters; and to all of you faithful commenters out there. Y’all showed admirable patience with my non-Orson-ness and had some really nice words of encouragement besides. Thanks for flying with us this week, and should your reading plans call for sports blogging in the future, we hope you’ll choose EDSBS. – Doug

Happy weekend; Orson makes his tanned and triumphant return on Monday.

Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.

No matter how big a guy might be, Nicky would take him on. You beat Nicky with fists, he comes back with a bat. You beat him with a knife, he comes back with a gun. And if you beat him with a gun, you better kill him, because he’ll keep comin’ back and back until one of you is dead.

O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes, how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

1.

Everything changes; nothing dies; the soul
Roams to and fro, now here, now there, and takes
What frame it will, passing from beast to man,
From our own form to beast and never dies.

2.

His ear had a real nasty cut and it was dangling from his head, bleeding badly. He grabbed his own ear and tried to yank it from his head. His teammates stopped him and the managers bandaged him. Man was that guy a tough one. He wanted to tear off his own ear so he could keep playing.

(HT: Nathan.)

A few site notes: (more…)

The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front… On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child… he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn’t probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram’s fleece reached his mouth from his throat… The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage.

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth’s noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

I’m telling you all–it all falls down…

Wake early if you want another man’s life or land. No lamb for the lazy wolf. No battles won in bed.

(Yes. Return of the pretentious quotes.)