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 . . . BURMA SHAVE see "CAPITALISM" for related links The history of Burma Shave. The following were roadside advertising signs [19251963] for Burma Shave: Violets are blue Roses are pink On graves Of those Who drive and drink Burma-Shave My job is Keeping faces clean And nobody knows De stubble I've seen Burma-Shave He tried To cross As fast train neared Death didn't draft him He volunteered Burma-Shave Altho insured Remember, kiddo They don't pay you They pay Your widow Burma-Shave Spring Has sprung The grass has riz Where last year's Careless drivers is Burma-Shave Proper Distance To him was bunk They pulled him out Of some guy's trunk Burma-Shave Leaves Face soft As woman's touch Yet doesn't cost you Near as much Burma-Shave This cream Makes the Gardener's daughter Plant her tu-lips Where she oughter Burma-Shave Substitutes Can let you down Quicker Than a Strapless gown Burma-Shave Many a forest Used to stand Where a Lighted match Got out of hand Burma-Shave If daisies Are your Favorite flower Keep pushin'up those Miles-per-hour Burma-Shave He lit a match To check gas tank That's why They call him Skinless frank Burma-Shave Don't lose your head To gain a minute You need your head Your brains are in it Burma-Shave Drove too long Driver snoozing What happened next Is not amusing Burma-Shave Brother Speeder Let's rehearse All together Good morning, nurse Burma-Shave Cautious rider To her reckless dear Let's have less bull And more steer Burma-Shave Around the curve Lickety-split It's a beautiful car Wasn't it? Burma-Shave At intersections Look each way A harp sounds nice But it's hard to play Burma-Shave  ;void(0)) BURNS & ALLEN . . Gracie Allen (18951964) & George Burns (18961996) {American husband and wife comedy team popular for more than three decades in vaudeville, radio, motion pictures, and television} see "HUMOR" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links The first night we had forty people out front and they didn't laugh at one of my jokes, but every time Gracie asked me a question, they fell out of their seats. So I made her the comic, and the act was a hit from that minute on. --George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum] (18961996) American comedian. - To Ensure Loyal Voters, Gracie Allen's Buttons Were the Sew-On Kind Cynthia Crossen The Wall Street Journal [27 October 2004] Her platform was "redwood trimmed with 'nutty' pine." She welcomed foreign relations, "so long as they bring their own bedding and don't stay too long." And while she sympathized with the poor, she rightly noted that "even brokers vote, especially if it doesn't rain on election day and the Yanks are playing out of town." She was Gracie Allen, and in 1940, she ran for president of the United States. Ms. Allen's quixotic campaign began as a publicity stunt for the radio comedy show she performed with her husband, George Burns. Though the gag was scheduled to last only two weeks, Ms. Allen's candidacy took on a life of its own. Within a few months, she had a mascot (a kangaroo), a slogan ("It's in the bag."), a song (one line: "If the country's going Gracie, so can you.") and a 34-city whistle-stop tour that went from Los Angeles to Omaha, Neb., where her newly formed Surprise Party gathered for its first and last nominating convention. Ms. Allen was not the only entertainer who dabbled in presidential politics. Eddie Cantor, the much-loved singer and actor, announced his candidacy on the radio in 1932. Will Rogers's name was floated in 1928 and 1932. Later, Pat Paulsen would throw his hat into the ring of the 1968, '72 and '76 elections. But Gracie Allen was the only one who, as she herself conceded, "forgot to take her hat off before she threw it in the ring." [. . . ] Ms. Allen's campaign was cartoonish and self-mocking, and she never made any attempt to get her name on a ballot. (In real life, neither she nor Mr. Burns publicly supported political candidates or causes.) She did, however, take some uncompromising stands on the issues of the day. She believed that Congress should work on a commission: "Whenever the country prospered, Congress would get 10% of the additional take." Also, farms should be larger "so asparagus can grow lying down." As for the idea that a woman couldn't cope with the demands of the office, she declared, "If a woman isn't qualified to be president, why is it you never see anything but pants on scarecrows?" Also, she asked, didn't men have plenty of their own shortcomings? "When I think of the awkward way our presidents act when a French ambassador kisses them on both cheeks," she tsked, "I don't have to tell you any more, do I, brother?" On the radio, and later on television, Gracie Allen's character was ditzy and obtuse. But in real life Ms. Allen was brainy and creative, and she executed several brilliant stunts. Earlier, she pretended to have painted 10 surrealist works of art (produced for the gag by someone else), with titles such as "Beyond the Before Yet Under the Vast Above, the World Is in Tears and Tomorrow Is Tuesday." She persuaded a New York gallery owner to display the art, and the exhibit subsequently traveled across the country. Later, Ms. Allen would become proficient playing "Concerto for Index Finger," which she eventually performed at Carnegie Hall. In her presidential campaign, Ms. Allen knew her lack of experience meant an uphill battle. "Lincoln had certain advantages we don't have today," she grumbled. "For instance, he could go out and split a bunch of rails, but the railroads are using iron ones more and more." As for kissing babies, Ms. Allen discriminated on the basis of gender: "I won't kiss male babies until they're over 21," she explained. She also invented the sew-on campaign button to discourage her supporters from changing their minds. Gracie Allen learned enough about politics in 1940 to write (with a ghostwriter) "How to Become President," a book of advice for future candidates. "Presidents are made, not born," she noted. "That's a good thing to remember. It's silly to think that presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won't admit it." In composing campaign letters, she counseled, "Don't start out, 'Dear Sir or Madam.' Be definite. People like to be one or the other." Another suggestion: "You should come from a good family, because while breeding isn't everything, it is said to be lots of fun." [. . . ] - (Play-on music:) (George and Gracie enter holding hands. Gracie stops, turns, looks toward the wings, and waves. She lets go of George's hand and walks toward the wing, still waving. Then she stops and beckons to whomever she is waving to come out. A man comes out, puts his arms around Gracie, and kisses her, and she kisses him. They wave to each other as he backs offstage. Gracie returns to George center stage.) Gracie: Who was that? George: You don't know? Gracie: No, my mother told me never to talk to strangers. George: That makes sense. Gracie: This always happens to me. On my way in, a man stopped me at the stage door and said, "Hiya, cutie, how about a bite tonight after the show?" George: And you said? Gracie: I said, "I'll be busy after the show but I'm not doing anything now," so I bit him. George: Gracie, let me ask you something. Did the nurse ever happen to drop you on your head when you were a baby? Gracie: Oh, no, we couldn't afford a nurse, my mother had to do it. George: You had a smart mother. Gracie: Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years. George: Gracie, what school did you go to? Gracie: I'm not allowed to tell. George: Why not? Gracie: The school pays me $25 a month not to tell. George: Is there anybody in the family as smart as you? Gracie: My sister Hazel is even smarter. If it wasn't for her, our canary would never have hatched that ostrich egg. George: A canary hatched an ostrich egg? Gracie: Yeah...but the canary was too small to cover that big egg. George: So? Gracie: So...Hazel sat on the egg and held the canary in her lap. George: Hazel must be the smartest in your family. Gracie: Oh, no. My brother Willy was no dummy either. George: Willy? Gracie: Yeah, the one who slept on the floor. George: Why would he sleep on the floor? Gracie: He had high blood pressure-- George: And he was trying to keep it down? Gracie: Yeah. George: I'd like to meet Willy. Gracie: You can't miss him. He always wears a high collar to cover the appendicitis scar on his neck. George: Gracie, your appendix is down around your waist. Gracie: I know, but Willy was so ticklish they had to operate up there. George: What's Willy doing now? Gracie: He just lost his job. George: Lost his job? Gracie: Yeah, he's a window washer. George: And? Gracie: And...he was outside on the twentieth story washing a window and when he got through he stepped back to admire his work. George: And he lost his job. Gracie: Yeah...And when he hit the pavement he was terribly embarrassed. George: Embarrassed? Gracie: Yeah...his collar blew off and his appendicitis scar showed. George: Gracie, this family of yours-- Gracie: When Willy was a little baby my father took him riding in his carriage, and two hours later my father came back with a different baby and a different carriage. George: Well, what did your mother say? Gracie: My mother didn't say anything because it was a better carriage. George: A better carriage? Gracie: Yeah...And the little baby my father brought home was a little French baby so my mother took up French. George: Why? Gracie: So she could understand the baby-- George: When the baby started to talk? Gracie: Yeah. George: Gracie, this family of yours, do you all live together? Gracie: Oh, sure. My father, my brother, my uncle, my cousin, and my nephew all sleep in one bed and-- George: In one bed? I'm surprised your grandfather doesn't sleep with them. Gracie: Oh, he did, but he died, so they made him get up.  BUSINESS . . see "CAPITALISM" for related links - Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) Merchant, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) - NINOTCHKA: Why should you carry other people's bags? PORTER: Well, that's my business, Madame. NINOTCHKA: That's no business. That's social injustice. PORTER: That depends on the tip. --Charles Brackett (18921969) American screenwriter & --Billy Wilder (19062002) Austrian-born American film director and screenwriter. "Ninotchka" [1939 film] - [Andrew] Carnegie exemplifies to me a truth about American money men that many earnest people fail to grasp which is that the chase and the kill are as much fun as the prize, which you then proceed to give away. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] I recall an advertising tycoon, Bruce Barton, saying in the late 1940s, when we were in a dither about the Russians: "What we ought to do is send up a flight of a thousand B-29s and drop a million Sears, Roebuck catalogs all over Russia." --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - After all, the chief business of the American people is business. --Calvin Coolidge (18721933) American Republican statesman and President [19231929]. Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors [17 January 1925]. We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. Entry written [31 December 1843] _Journals_ [1909-1914]. - The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market reward for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. --John Kenneth Galbraith (19082006) American economist. _Annals of an Abiding Liberal_ [1979] Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves. --John Kenneth Galbraith (19082006) American economist. _The Great Crash, 1929_ [1955] - My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now. --John Fitzgerald Kennedy (19171963) American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [19611963]. (Comments on price increases proposed by U.S. Steel [April 1962].) The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business. --Walter Lippmann (18891974) American journalist. Address to the Academy of Political Science [25 March 1931]; quoted in Ronald Steel _Walter Lippmann and the American Century_ [1980]. I hold it to be our duty to see that the wage worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, shall get their fair share of the benefit of business prosperity. But it either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from it. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. Address to the Ohio Constitutional Convention [1 February 1912]. - It is said to have been reported to one of the Roman emperors, as a piece of good news, that one of his subjects had invented a process for manufacturing unbreakable glass. The emperor gave orders that the inventor should be put to death and the records of his invention should be destroyed. If the invention had been put on the market, the manufacturers of ordinary glass would have been put out of business; there would have been unemployment that would have caused political unrest, and perhaps revolution. --Arnold Toynbee (18891975) English historian. _Change And Habit: The Challenge Of Our Time_ [1966], Chapter 7 - October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. Gentlemen: You have undertaken to ruin me. I will not sue you, for law takes too long. I will ruin you. Sincerely, Cornelius Vanderbilt --Cornelius Vanderbilt (17941877) American shipping and railroad magnate. 1854 letter to his associates, Charles Morgan and Cornelius Garrison, who had been scheming to ruin a Vanderbilt transit company and establish one of their own {GBAQ}. The public be damned! I'm working for my stockholders. --William H. Vanderbilt (1821-1885) American railway magnate, Comment to a news reporter [2 October 1882]. I am always amazed when people proudly proclaim, "I never mix business with pleasure." I want to reply, "What is wrong with you?" If you want to build a successful team at work, your management philosophy should be exactly the opposite you should always mix business with pleasure. You should be constantly finding new ways to bring pleasure in business to yourself, your employees, and your customers! --Matt Weinstein, _Managing to Have Fun_ [1997] . . If you are too busy to spend time with your children then you are busier than God intended you to be. --Rabbi Mendel Epstein, in 1996 I have other fish to fry. --John Evelyn (16201706) English writer, gardener and diarist. _Memoirs_ [1660] (First found in "Memoirs," but undoubtedly of earlier origin.) If you want work well done, select a busy man the other kind has no time. --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania." _The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard_, comp., Elbert Hubbard II [1927] A comely old man as busy as a bee. --John Lyly (1554?1606) English prose stylist and playwright. _Euphues and His England_ [1580] [On being informed that editor Harold Ross had called her on her honeymoon demanding a belated article:] Tell him I've been too fucking busy or vice versa. --Dorothy Parker (18931967) American critic and humorist. Quoted in John Keats _You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker_ [1970]. So little done, so much to do. --Cecil Rhodes (18531902) South African statesman. When your schedule leaves you brain-drained and stressed to exhaustion, it's time to give up something. Delegate. Say "No." Be brutal. It's like cleaning out a closetafter a while, it gets easier to get rid of things. You discover that you really didn't need them anyway. --Marilyn Ruman The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Treatise on Parents and Children_ [1914] "Children's Happiness" So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892) English poet. "In Memoriam A. H. H." [1850] Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It is not a day when you lounge around doing nothing: it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it. --Margaret Thatcher (1925 ) British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [19791990]. ----- amok [uh-MUHK], adjective: 1. In or into a jumbled or confused state. 2. In or into an uncontrolled state or a state of extreme activity. 3. In a frenzy to do violence or kill. ;void(0)) BUSYBODIES . . Photograph: 1991 cover of "Time" see: "CURIOSITY" see: "MINDING OWN BUSINESS" see "COMMUNICATION" for other related links ^ From _With the Flag on the Seven Seas: Fifty Years a Seafarer_ by Admiral Sir Bulwark Bloode [1907] : The Pacific Station had its ups and downs. My first mission when I took command of the "Myrmidon" was to track down some Solomon Islanders who had eaten a Quaker missionary. By all accounts he was a strange fellow who did not drink nor eat meat and walked around barefoot. It seems he stuck his nose into some native war and got eaten for his troubles. The poor devil was wrapped in palm leaves, parboiled in salt water and then lightly grilled. --_The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes_ Introduced by Edward Leeson [2005], "Food, Drink and Entertaining" ^ The makers of our Constitution [...] conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. --Louis Brandeis (18561941) American lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [19161939]. Dissenting opinion "Olmstead v. United States" [1928]. Your curiosity Runs open-mouth'd, ravenous as winter wolf. I dare not stand in its way. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _Osorio_, Act 3. You will always find those who think they know your duty better than you know it. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. Those who in quarrels interpose Must often wipe a bloody nose. --John Gay (16851732) English poet and dramatist. _Fables_, pt. 1 [1727], "The Mastiffs" Not to know certain things is a great part of wisdom. --Hugo Grotius (15831645) Dutch philosopher. playwright, and poet. In Edwin Rabbie (ed.) _The Poetry of Hugo Grotius: Original Poetry 16041608_ [1992]. The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us. --Eric Hoffer (19021983) American longshoreman, philosopher, and author who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. _The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements _ [1951] Our wail over our neighbor's soul is simply the wail of a busybody. --James Gibbons Huneker (18601921) American critic of music, art, and literature. "Max Stirner" in _Essays by James Huneker_ [1929] The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. --William James (18421910) American philosopher. _Talks to Teachers and Students_ [1899] Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. --C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (18981963) British scholar and novelist. _God in the Dock_ [1948] - In the village churchyard she lies, Dust is in her beautiful eyes, No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs; At her feet and at her head Lies a slave to attend the dead, But their dust is white as hers. Was she a lady of high degree, So much in love with the vanity And foolish pomp of this world of ours? Or was it Christian charity, And lowliness and humility, The richest and rarest of all dowers? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; No color shoots into those cheeks, Either of anger or of pride, At the rude question we have asked; Nor will the mystery be unmasked By those who are sleeping at her side. Hereafter?--And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book To find her failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own short-comings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors! --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "In the Churchyard at Cambridge" in _Birds of Passage_ [1858] - The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil in someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_ [1859], ch. 1 - No, the American car industry was not destroyed by its cars. The American car industry was destroyed by the Fun-Suckers. You know the Fun-Suckers. You may be married to one. The Fun-Suckers go around saying how unsafe this fun thing is and how unhealthy that fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring, insensitive, divisive, contagious, and fattening every other fun thing is. The Fun-Suckers are a bit too careful, a bit too concerned, a bit too scrupulous. That's bullshit. They're evil and they hate us. The motive behind spoiling things for others and then throwing a wet blanket over the rained-on parade is a matter of neither caution nor morals. The Fun-Suckers suck the fun out of life in order to gain control. They've found a way to gain power without merit. --P.J. O'Rourke (1947 ) American political satirist. Introduction, _Driving Like Crazy_ [2009] - [The reformer] wants his conscience to be your guide. --Laurence J. Peter (19191990) Canadian teacher and author. _Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time_ [1977] One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is to curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please. --Pythagoras (582486 B.C.) Ionian mathematician and philosopher. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. --Herbert Spencer (18201903) English philosopher. _Essays_ [1891] vol. 3, "State Tamperings with Money and Banks" No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people. --William Howard Taft (18571930) 27th President of the United States [19091913] and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [19211930]. The self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all. --Henry David Thoreau (18171862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. "Visitors" in _Walden_ [1854] If an American were condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. _Democracy in America_ [18351840] Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ [1894] ch. 15 epigraph: "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" - ...Today, party lines are all but extinct, and eavesdropping has become more technologically sophisticated. But despite the lack of privacy on party lines, some people enjoyed their sense of community. Michθle Martin, author of the 1991 book "Hello, Central?" told of a Canadian woman who cut her finger and called a friend on her party line to ask for help. "Before the friend could answer someone else piped up, 'Bind it up in salt pork.' " --Cynthia Crossen "When Eavesdropping Meant That You Had Some Nosy Neighbors" _The Wall Street Journal_ [5 June 2006] and see: Oh, the woman on our party line's the nosiest thing She picks up her receiver when she knows it's my ring, --Hank Williams (19231953) American songwriter and singer of country music. "Mind Your Own Business." [1949 song] - ----- eavesdrop (verb) ['eevz-drahp] To listen secretly to the conversations of others. foment [foh-MENT; FOH-ment], transitive verb: To nurse to life or activity; to incite; to abet; to instigate; often in a bad sense. kibitz [KIB-its], verb: 1. To chat; converse. 2. To look on and offer unwanted, usually meddlesome advice to others. officious [uh-FISH-uhs], adjective: Marked by excessive eagerness in offering services or advice where they are neither requested nor needed; meddlesome. quidnunc (noun) ['kwid-nκngk] A busybody, a nosy person, especially one who is always asking questions that are none of his or her business. end page | BABIES - BARTENDERS | BASEBALL | BASTARDS - BEATLES (THE) | BEAUTY | BED - BEGINNINGS | BEHAVIOR - BELIEF | BENNY (JACK) - BIBLE | BICYCLES - BIRDS | BIRTH - BITTERNESS | BLAME - BLOGGING | BLONDES - BOOK BURNING | BOOKS | BOOMERS (THE) - BOXING | BOYS - BREAKING UP | BREASTS - BRITAIN | BROADWAY - BUBBLES (ECONOMIC) | BUGS BUNNY - BUREAUCRACY | BURMA SHAVE - BUSYBODIES | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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