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Sunday, March 22, 2009

Poem by Billy Collins

came across this from The Writers' Almanac for today. What a delightful poem that helps me to appreciate the arts. I will use it in the future....


Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Engineering Conversions (bad jokes...)


- 2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton

- Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond

- Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram

- Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon

- 1000 aches: 1 megahurtz

- 453.6 graham crackers: 1 pound cake

- 1 million-million microphones: 1 megaphone

- 1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles

- 365.25 days: 1 unicycle

- 2000 mockingbirds: 2 kilomockingbirds

- 10 cards: 1 decacards

- 1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche

- 10 rations: 1 decoration

- 2 monograms: 1 diagram

- 8 nickels: 2 paradigms

- 2.4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital: 1 I.V. League

- 100 Members of Parliament / Senators: Not 1 decision