Category: books

Sad news for literature and languages studies

 

In the USA and in the UK  we find fewer people are studying the humanities.Here it is because of the economic climate.. people wish to study “useful” subjects.Literature won’t get you a job,perhaps.It only enables you to live better.Already in schools the study of Greek and Latin has almost gone.

Economics still gets students………. odd considering that economists did not forecast the recession but were up to their necks in mathematical models.Economicis not a science and cannot be.I believe it’s a branch of philosophy in a broad sense.

I admit I did not study what we called “The Arts” at University but most of my friends did.But I read poetry.I liked Auden greatly.I read all the great novels.I read Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch.I read Evelyn Waugh/I even read Nabokov…. what a writer!And I read Shakespeare Plays.

But with the much higher fees,recession and other worries,fewer students will spend three years studying the humanities.Plumbing or Carpentry are better options

I am thinking of writing some new plays.

A  Fit Plumber’s Nightly Schemes

Witches astir.

Ham to let.

Sing Fear.

Make up for the Mind

A Midsummer Balls Up.

The Emptiest.

Please defreeze me,let me grow.

A man without limits

Much Ado about Hacking.

As you Recycle it.

Julius Seized the Emails.

Fool Us and Squeeze Us.

Twelfth Fright.

Hacked to Death.

The Blaming of the Guru,

Prospero Not.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-the-arts-too-elitist

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/?key=55705194

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Snakes observed

Friedrich Nietzsche

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
11257109-old-mosaic
Snake

by D.H. Lawrence

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, if you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth ?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him ?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him ?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured ?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices :
If you were not afraid, you would kill him !
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act !
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate :
A pettiness.
D.H. Lawrence | Classic Poems
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Nietzsche Reading Response (Arthur Schweitzer)

Weird and interesting

arthurschweitzer's avatarLiterature Drugs Modernity

In Nietzsche’s discussion of the Dionysian World View, I found the most interesting aspect of his writing was his description of the Dionysian state as an abandonment of both the limits of existence and of the memories of personal experience. Essentially, he defines intoxication to be a state, which allows a person to momentarily supersede the bounds of reality, and thus come closer to experiencing the limitless freedom of the dreamscape, while conscious. Though Nietzsche’s description of this seems a bit optimistic, I agree that intoxication is in a sense a tool for losing inhibition, which more often than not makes reality a bit bland. Nietzsche reiterates this by mentioning that the individualist mindset also disappears in the Dionysian state, meaning people come together when mutually intoxicated and work collectively.

            One thing that confused me was his comparison of the two types of attitudes that demonstrate what Greek life…

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Does it matter how many people read your post?

 

At home Oct 20 006If we write a perceptive post or a humorous post  we will  feel happy  if a lot of people read it.But,if   it helps just one person or amuses just one person then that is enough.We don’t know how far the ripples will spread.

If a butterfly in the South ~America flapping its wings can cause a storm in Europe…a few good words or  one perceptive photo might have a strong influence.We will never know.

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More about Geza Vermes and his writings on the historical Jesus

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/features/5022802._The_world_s_finest_Christ_scholar_/

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A long review of Conversations with Emmanuel Levinas

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24561-conversations-with-emmanuel-levinas-1983-1994/

This is really good.Not just a short book review but a discussion ranging quite widely of all Levinas‘s era and his Judaism.

It makes me think how  much we can take our life for granted when we consider all the tragedies in the world.I read yesterday that men are never confident of their masculinity and thus war is inevitable just as scapegoats have been needed to carry  the  evil of us who cannot face our own evil…

Are humans able to change?What is the role of women in all of this?

I am  mulling it over whilst heavy rain falls down and leaves fly off the trees

 

 

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Is it Righteous to Be?: Interviews with Emmanuel Lévinas

I am very  pleased to say I have just ordered this after reading some of it on Google Scholar.If you are interested in Philosophy of the last century and in history then I urge you to read it.Because unless you are educated in philosophy it’s easier to get a grasp of his ideas through interviews where he  is answering questions from other people.I like this type of book even when it’s a novelist or a poet or artist.Something attracts me to the idea of interaction between two people

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Geza Vermes:An interview

Geza Vermes:An interview

This is well worth reading,if only for the history of one Jewish man’s survival of the Nazi‘s attmept to wipe out Hungarian Jews.I feel his books would be worth reading.I shall post  if and when I read them

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Hypnosis and meditation for pain

In addition to my previous post if you are in pain look here:It is a good website.And it helps migraine,I found.And some dentists use it

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The best book on meditation….by Lawrence LeShan

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271249.How_to_Meditate

This book is by Lawrence Le Shan.I’ve had mine many many years.Since then it’s become much more popular and there are hundreds of books on it…I also admire LeShan’s other writing and his work.I used his meditation when travelling alone on a train to a funeral many years ago.

You can find out more  about  him here.He worked with cancer patients.I read his book on that when I thought I might have it.He seemed to feel that  if you lead an uncongenial life to please your parents or others and  do not follow your own inner callings you are more likely to get it.He’s a fascinating man.His wife is interesting too and very bold in her thinking..Eda LeShan.

Other good authors on this topic are Patricia Carrington [General discussion and warnings   about excessive meditating]  and Hubert Benson [Relaxation Response.].

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The crucial importance of the face:More about Levinas

http://www.pietisten.org/summer02/facetoface.html

About the face in Levinas‘s philosphy.

This is a website in the USA.It  has  some good articles mainly relating to religon,spirituality,humanity and thought

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A review of a book about Levinas’s philosophy

http://owenbynhei.livejournal.com/31259.html

I am still reading about Levinas,You can download an e boook here

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Getting Inspiration When Writing

A helpful blog for aspiring writers

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wordplaywritersforum's avatarWordPlay Writers' Forum

FallynFinding inspiration when writing can be the hardest part of a writer’s job, but it can also be found anywhere and hit at any time.

KJ Rollinson – her friends call her Kathy – is one of WordPlay’s most prolific writers. She writes something everyday, and her dedication has seen her moving toward completing her ‘Fallyn’ trilogy. Here she explains what inspires her to write, and how she keeps the momentum going:

I am sometimes asked from where I got my inspiration when writing my ‘Fallyn’ trilogy. Well it all started when I went to an Art class and a friend was drawing a very proud dragon, with half-furled wings, perched on a rock. I decided to write a short story of 500 words for her. I called my dragon Solo. As Fallyn says ‘I called you Solo because you are alone, but you will grow up to be the…

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Books ….how not to act old

My books and home 029

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/books/review/InsideList-t.html?_r=1

Don’t wear a watch… unless it’s a diamond one and you are Queen Elizabeth

Do have your mobile on a contract not PAYG… you need it for the time

Don’t ever mention fountain pens

Don’t carry a straw shopper

Don’t do joined up handwriting

Don’t do any handwriting

Do hire a man

Do learn about sexually transmitted diseases

Don’t count on your fingers…

Don’t call your lover,my fiance

Don’t wear a “winter coat”

Do get anorexia

Do at least pretend to be manic depressive.

Do kiss everybody.

Do become bisexual

Don’t mention your cataract surgery.

Do die when alone.

Do have herpes but not IBS

Do learn the decimal system

Do learn what a kilogram weighs

Do have a pocket full of calculators

Do spend a fortune on your hair [I only have one]

Do cripple yourself with 6 foot heels.

Do wear a see through blouse and no camisole [  but a nude bra is ok]

Do ride a horse not a bicycle.

Do get a manicure even when you are dead

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Happiness by the book?

Why are there so many books on happiness and yet less actual happiness?I like this piece  by Amy Bloom in the  NYT.I find reading reviews makes me happy.Men make me happy of they are humorous.Women do because they converse well.And peace and quiet make me happy.

I’m so happy

Not to be a baby in a nappy.

I feel so blue

When I miss you

I don’t want a lover.

Too much bother.

I like to be alone

Just me and my comb.

Shakespeare was a poet

I know it

And I am not

I quite forgot

As I felt gay

All  of today

I’ll be sad

Or maybe mad

as rotation

is the human situation

OMG!

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Plath’s therapist was not actually trained as a pyschoanalyst

http://www.salon.com/2004/11/29/plath_therapist/

I know that psychoanalysts are not meant to tell patients what to do.So I was surprised this one did.. like telling her to get a divorce.Now I discover she had not even undergone her own analysis.

Make sure your therapist  is trained if you need one

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Eat well on a budget plus a few thoughts on prices

Good Food: 101 Budget Dishes: Triple-tested Recipes by Jane Hornby

You can get this for 1 penny on amazon,It’s part of a series of small cookery books aimed at people who are unable to spend too much time and money in the kitchen.

I got a catalogue today from an online clothes catalogue where I have shopped before.But now I’ll be lucky to afford a scarf.The scarf is £55!Also they sell dresses which are not washable!How weird is that?

For fruit and veg most supermarkets are expensive.I find Lidl‘s good and much cheaper.The jam is also very good.We do have a market but the quality is variable there

and the queue is long too

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THE CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION TO SYLVIA PLATH

 There has more been written,probably, about Sylvia Plath than any other poet of the last century.Much of it is  various  attempts at her  biography.The focus was on her actual life and its events.I  had only read “Daddy” and “lady Lazarus” but lately I read more from her collected works and I am now impressed with her poetic gift and her hard work developing it.Perhaps she worked too hard.Who can say?
So I was ready to read some critical evaluation of her writing.This book is excellent if a little short. I found it quite easy to read even though I have no academic training in literature.

There is a summary of her life but the main focus is on each  phase of her writing For someone of  only 30  when she  died she underwent remarkable transitions and growth of her poetic mind.I am also now re ading her prose which I had dismissed.

I recommend this wholeheartedly.There is another volume “The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath”

Here is a poem I like especially the last verse

Nick and the Candlestick

By Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! they are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs—
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
 
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On a low income? : a blog about cookery using very cheap ingredients

http://agirlcalledjack.com/

This blog has been much praised here in the UK.I am not as short of money as she is but all our bills are rising far above inflation.

I also recommend,

Good Food on a budget by Georgina Horley

Frugal Food by Delia Smith and

The left over cookery book by Marika Hanbury -Tenison

Cookery Do by  Elaine Feinstein

.BTW        I looked at shoes in Clarks yesterday,what a shock to see the prices on the better shoes and boots.I have to have good thick soles…

So it’s just a new scarf for me this winter.Or TKMaxx

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Sylvia Plath and emotional disorders

One person’s views on Plath,thinking too much and emotional disorders…

boyswillbeboys06's avatarThis Is Me

I read somewhere that Sylvia Plath once said, “If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.” You know, I really think she’s on to something. Besides the thousands of people that think she is a goddess of literature, I have personal reasons to concede to her understanding.

Almost exactly a year ago, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but my therapist now thinks that it may, in fact, be only a side-diagnosis with the main problem being Major Depressive Disorder. Ok, make up my mind here, David. Why am I medicating?

Sometimes it’s really frustrating. When I come home from work some days and absolutely collapse and am unable to do anything for hours, I feel like all of this thinking is a waste of time. When I start feeling as though life is absolutely meaningless and I have no purpose, it feels like thinking drags me down. But…

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Entertaining myself….. guilty as charged

I read very  hard books  mostly and then I  like to have fun.I  wanted to be or not to be a playwright.But I only wrote  the titles.I will sell them if you feel inspired

Borneo and the toilets   [A new rock band and their troubles]

A midsummer night’s scream.[How a queen loved an ass and what followed]

Julius seized me. [Possible erotic story]

Henry the Horse [A play for toddlers]

Richard the Blurred [How  the War of the Roses would have been better if they all wore glasses]

King Fear  [How even  the mighty can panic  better]

MacDuff,the pudding  [Scottish cookery book?]

Damnlet   [How swearing improves pain]

Hamerous [A kind of humorous version of Hamlet where he marries Ophelis or Mia Farrow

Hams of old England. {Bad acting in the past]

Nymphs and Leopards. [Love in the Jungle]

Lieberscreamzsche  [How Nietzsche ruined my life  ,the opera]

Nietzsche’s word was my father. [A literary autobiography]

Who won the Bore? [How being deaf can change history]

England’s screaming peasants blend [If only]

Death ,where is thy King?  [Plato up his own arse]

Foreigner’s  rile us. [Life in the UK now]

Boldlock the beloved  [ A Jewish love story with music]

Shyborg  [Shylock rewritten without anti-semitism…. and how cyborgs were living in that era…. you must write this]

Manbatting [ How cricket wrecked my marriage]

Sudden love [How I fell over a stile into a man’s arms]

Treasure Spyland     [USA today]

Who stole my male,my email and is beyond the pale?  [ Obviously it’s GCHQ]

Was that the fast God byte {Theology and  Information wreckednology]

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Art is my Self-Giving Friend

I’m a sucker for lovely photographs

Wuji's avatar Wuji Seshat

68

My Art is no art
It is the simple flowing
Of my humble being
I sit in a mood of reverie
Desires and sensations beautified

I subscribe to beauty
For a version in harmony
For a way out of suffering
Art strums completion
By thriving creativity in life

When I paint or draw or write
I am playing mysticism
In my private dream world
This hide-and-seek suggests
My soul illuminates with nature

Let me submit to art
Blending impressions without a name
For the sake of distinct
Eternal memories that are replayed
In every artist-painter-poet-writer’s soul.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Cold-summer-morning-408822206

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Emotional Abuse and Invalidation – Practice of Madness Magazine

Worth visiting the website as it is very high quality in my view

Katherine's avatarHow my heart speaks

Emotional Abuse and Invalidation – Practice of Madness Magazine.

A fascinating and awful story…. and an intriguing website to visit.

Many women suffer at the hands of a husband or partner,or from a cruel tongue….here’s some advice

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An article about the American poet Elizabeth Bishop.And a poem

http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/article.html?id=663

I love her work

Exchanging Hats

Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady’s hat,
–oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen’s caps
with exhibitionistic screech,

the visors hanging o’er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
–the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.

Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian’s feather bonnet,
–perversities may aggravate

the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?

Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can’t you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?

Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim.

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Stupid? Or smart?(Repost) – Tyler Lee

Philosophy blog

1pizzaperday's avatarPhilosophy 12

Either I am smart or stupid

I am not smart

/Therefore I am stupid

I used disjunctive syllogism for today’s post. It’s a pretty simple syllogism that uses a simple form. An example of disjunctive syllogism is
Major premise:   Either the meeting is at school or at home.
Minor premise:   The meeting is not at home.
Conclusion:      Therefore the meeting is at school.

(From http://www.fibonicci.com/logical-reasoning/syllogisms/examples-types/)

Let’s discuss about the form and factual correctness of this argument. First, let’s take a look at my major premise: Either I am smart or stupid. To me, this is factually correct since I see nobody in between stupid and smart. Since this is true to me, the argument so far is sound. Now, take a look at the second premise. This premise is obviously not factually correct, so that means that the argument is now not sound. Since there is a…

View original post 36 more words

A new to me book website:Bookish.

My original idea was to write about books.I just found this new website devoted to books.Here is a funny article about how Freud would have judged 5 fictional characters.It is in the Huff Post.Under the photo of Freud it says this was originally on Bookish.Click that link  to visit Bookish and sign up if you like it

I can’t get the link right for Bookish

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New Books for the duped

How to make love in a cardboard box by A.Homeless- Manne

Fucking  that Fiction by Jason Give-me -the Creeps-Again.

Loving your bites by M.Dogge

How to be more obscene than I by George Grammar

Men and other post modern Fictions  by Merlin Ponto.

Freud for the Fucked up by Plain Sigher

Satyrs and satire by Sasi Sartro

Beavers love  lives reexamined by A.French.

Hatred is bad for your Love Life by Good Wimmin

How to post Modern Poetry by No Moore-Truth N.A

Fat,Fed up and Fucked  by  the “Come Diet with me” group

Sort out your Crap by Jane Knowitall

Obscenity for Dummies by Big Bad Man

I like Bullshit the best by Whoreman Taylor

They saw him coming by Bad Girls

Find your H spot by Good Doctor

Dariel and the Head Muckers by M.Daemon

Poetry for Perverted Animals by A Vet [D.Sc.]

I wrote this crap myself by A N Dildoson

Grammar for Girls who  hate Shit by Minx Teacher

Commentaries are Crap by Cate Calmo

Crap your way to success by Freda Markup

Damned demons haunted  me hourly by Denis  Menacedt

New types of Shit  for Beginners by Terence Arse.

Say it with Word by A Processor

Swearing for Success by Potato Turnip

How Obscenity can Change Your ~Life/Wife/Strife.

Be even more Obscene with my Tips by Callia Girls

Write your own  bloody Prescriptions by Ima Dokter

X ratings for winners by B.A.Follywood

Who shat there  last? by T.H.E,.Prime Minstere

Blogging for Beggars by T.H.E Bumm

How buggers blocked my blog by A.Nite-Lite

Violent virgins by Eve Monster,B.A [Huns]

Where to go when utterly fucked by I.W.A.S.Clegg.Ph.D

Bloody Books by Boris Bum M.A

Mind your Ass by Mary Lambs.

Fools’ Folly by Fred Dread.

Folly me to Bed by Ally Cat.

Swearing is simpler by Short Tempered-Manne

Bums,butts and bottoms for the bewildered by Bary Mee.

Do it in the loo by W.C.Humor and sons

Lose your virginity tonite by A.M.A Groper.Ph.D

How to swear better by I.A.M.Insane-Now

Rude bits of the Bible collected   and  annotated by Ravia Gorilla [with photographs.]

Fuck my Fat by Frezzia Wimmin

Fucking for the Feckless by Fairy Jane.

From Fecklessness to Fucked  Up by F.Off [B.Sc.]

Baking with Shit all by Maria Belly-Button

How to starve by Benny Fit-Collector

How to bake dogs by Chinese Cooks

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