Quote Unquote - $100

"I am not a 100 dollar bill. Not everybody is going to
like me."

Rebecca Glasscock, RuPaul's Drag Race

Quote Unquote - The Nuer

I have to share this extract on the connection between humans and animals.

It's from How to be Your Dog's Best Friend - the best dog training book you can buy, according to a friend of Fluffy Bear's. It's written by The Monks of Skete, a monestary in upper New York State who have been training and breeding German Shepards for decades.

In Egypt, there is a devoutly religious tribe called the Nuer. The Nuer live near the Nile River and raise cattle for their livelihood. But their cows are more to them than just a source of income. Barns, cow halters, and electric fences are foreign to the Nuer. Instead, they integrate their cows into the total fabric of their daily lives, utilizing them in work, letting them mill around, sleeping near them, and meticulously grooming and bathing them. Each cow has a name and a personal history, known by all the tribe. Daily life is characterized by incessant conversation (or so it seems to an outsider) about the cattle. Each tribesman has plenty of stories to tell about his cows, cows he has owned, or cows he hopes to own. The Nuer are always looking for the "ideal cow". Cows even attend some religious services, and Nuer ritual is full of references to you know what. Nuer religion has been studied extensively and is considered by anthropologists an archetypal primitive religion. The Nuer are, on the whole, physically healthy and pscychologically wholesome. They live totally integrated with creatures that are on another level of existence.

Quote Unquote - New friends

"Your new friend privileges are hereby revoked."

Bill, after we introduced a couple to the gang who turned out to be nutters.

Quote Unquote - Ole King Cole

Years ago, in a land far away, I met a lovely woman who told me a great story about her kid.

He was about six, and he was given one of those nusery rhyme CDs for his birthday. He loved it, learnt all the songs and used to sing them in the bath.

One day, his mother heard him belting out at the top of his voice but, when he got to a certain line, he whispered instead of singing.

She asked him why, and he said, clearly uncomfortable, that there were "bad words" in the song.

"What bad words?" she asked him, confused.

And so, awkwardly, he sang to his mother:

 

"Old King Cole was a merry arsehole and a merry arsehole was he..."

Quote Unquote - Women's work

Heard said by a speaker at a charity lunch:

"Violence against women causes more injuries than malaria, war, cancer and traffic accidents combined."

"Women do two thirds of the world's work and own 1% of the world's wealth."

Quote Unquote - An acquired taste

Fluffy Bear:

"The British are an acquired taste."

Bill:

"Considering colonialism, not so much acquired as imposed."

 

 

Quote Unquote - No shit, Sherlock

Fluffy Bear's dad was once at a convention in the US and someone asked him:

"Has England had another detective as good as Sherlock Holmes since his death?"