Age, alcohol and a great unknown line

It was the birthday of my youngest brother on Sunday, he is now 33, the age of Christ as they say. It makes me feel quite old, knowing that my youngest brother is 33. Just ponder about it for a moment. Anyway, 33 is the kind of birthday one celebrates, and he did, so he came up with this on hos Facebook wall the next day: "At 33, I am feeling old. Although it may due to to alcohol." This is a new great unknown line and thus I wanted to share it.

An aphorism about Monday

I am not Oscar Wilde, but I do try to emulate him as much as much as I can and sometimes I do come up with half-decent aphorisms, which I qualify as great unknown lines. Here is one I thought about going to work: "Sometimes on Monday the weekend seems two weeks away." I don't know why, but it certainly felt this way today. I was not even a particularly hard day, just moderately busy. But it felt long and I feel like the week will be long, twice longer than usual in fact. Am I the only one having this perception?

Art, moral and an aphorism

Quick blog post about a controversy and a great unknown line my brother wrote on Facebook about it, very close to Oscar Wilde's aphorisms. Anyway, a ballet dancer from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet was sacked because he played in a porn. My initial reaction: so what if he did? It's not like he raped anyone. My second reaction is: shame on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, it is a wrong decision in so many ways. That said, my brother summed it up in a great unknown line: "Artists aren't there to promote some silly morals. Artists should stay away from morals. Managers should stay away from everything." Worthy of Oscar Wilde, I say.

A new great unknown line

"It takes a strong mind to resist temptation and be virtuous. It takes a genius to turn vice into a virtue." This is not from me, but from my brother, who admires Oscar Wilde greatly and is trying to emulate him with his own aphorisms. I found it on his Facebook wall, of course.

Une citation à propos de l'Amérique

J'ai décidé de réécrire ici une citation qui me hante. Elle est tirée de la nouvelle Antigonish dans Arvida. C'est la première phrase de la nouvelle (on dit incipit en littérature). "L'Amérique est une mauvaise idée qui a fait du chemin". Ca s'applique je n'en doute pas à Antigonish. À Arvida aussi, et sans doute à bien des endroits où j'ai vécu et que j'ai visités. Il y a plein de routes qui mènent nulle part. Et c'est une particularité du Nouveau Continent: les routes à n'en plus finir. Enfin, qu'est-ce que vous pensez de cet aphorisme? Et autre question connexe mais plus triviale: quelqu'un a déjà visité Antigonish?

Another food related great unknown line

I didn't notice it when I wrote it at first, but this post contains a great unknown line. Well, not quite. I wrote a variation of the last line. which was "comfort is a biochemical reaction" on Facebook: "Happiness is a biochemical reaction". In this version, this is definitely a great unknown line, or at least a worthy aphorism. It is again, just like last time, food related. I blog about something different next time, promise.

Italian prose poetry and wisdom

During the last fifteen years or so, I have wanted to learn Italian without actually doing anything about it. I did acting, singing, but learning to have even a basic conversation, I just was too lazy to do it. My Italian friend (the only one I am still in contact with) has published on Facebook this nice little piece of prose:
 "Domani sveglia all'alba! Ho tutto il pomeriggio convincermi della poesia nascosta negli esami medici di primo matino."

I didn't understand much, so I used (gasp!) Google Translate. It means something like: "Tomorrow I wake up at dawn! I convince myself of the poetry of early morning medical tests." It is of course a dreadful translation and I still understand little of it, but I love how it flows in Italian. I told her on the Wall comments about it, about the fact that I shamefully used a machine translation. She replied: "Tomorrow morning, after all blood tests will be done, sitting in front of my cappuccino and croissant, I will drink a toast to machine fallibility :D". This is good enough to be an aphorism of pure wisdom and a great unknown line. On a trivial side note, I love Italian breakfasts (they are unapologetically sugary and decadent) and it is the only place on Earth where I enjoyed drinking coffee (I barely exaggerate). But it reminds me as well that I should trust my own skills and my capacity to learn more, and then I would not rely on technology.

A new great unknown line

I haven't blogged one in a while. This one is from my younger (youngest) brother. I often plug the family's witticism. Anyway, on his Facebook wall, he wrote (in French), about a long union meeting: "I like to be useful. Not too often however." I think I should write a coffee table book of family aphorisms.

A brand new great unknown line

It is I think a first: there is no context to this great unknown line, or very little, I never said it or wrote/read it on Facebook , wrote it on a blog or anywhere. I just thought about it and needed to write it down for posterity. So here it is:

"I end up doing a lot more than I want but a lot less than I should."

A great unknown line from my bro

This is another great unknown line that I found on Facebook, written by my brother on his Wall. This is a nice aphorism and it can work for pretty much everybody:

"The issue is not that we're too shallow, we're just not the right kind of shallow."

A whimsical great unknown line

Another one from my youngest brother, which is good enough to be an aphorism. You can see that we read Oscar Wilde. He added to his Facebook status update:, after a friend teased him about being humble

"When you think about it, humility is such a lie."

Funny, but also often true.

Great unknown line number 8

It seems that this themed series is slowly building into a little online list of aphorisms of honourable size since I first started it. Who knows, maybe I could make my own dictionary of aphorisms with my name on it. Anyway, this line is the one I always give when somebody asks me if I dance:

-Never when I'm sober.

Which is both accurate and funny.

A great unknown line (from myself)

I am trying with this post to start a new series of posts based on one topic/theme (as I promised here). These posts will be about great lines that I have either heard or said and which I want to leave here to posterity, because I find them quite good (especially mines, as I am terribly vain). Granted, I am no Oscar Wilde, neither do I have his talent for aphorism, but I can sometimes be funny or witty.

So anyway, we were having a barbecue in Liverpool, in one of the few warm and sunny days we had that year. A friend of my housemate had brought a bottle of wine, which she dropped on the floor minutes after she arrived. It shattered, obviously. Then I said:

"I hope that was a cheap bottle."

It made people laugh.

Quoting the great Burgess

I have never quoted Anthony Burgess on this blog yet, and since today I am not very inspired, I might as well do it now. So there it is, a little aphorism:

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”