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. . . FIFTY see "AGE" for related links The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. I spit on the grave of my awful forties. --James Thurber (18941961) American humorist and cartoonist. (Upon turning 50.)  ;void(0)) FIGHT . . see also: "DUELS" We ourselves saw these women, who were there fighting in front of all the Indian men as women captains ... so courageously that the Indian men did not dare turn their backs, and anyone who did they killed with clubs right there before us ... These women are very white and tall and have hair very long and braided and they are very robust and go about naked [but] with their privy parts covered. --Gaspar de Carvajal (15001584) Spanish Dominican missionary. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 332. Cohan & Major note: Carvajal dubbed these ladies 'Amazons', thereby earning for himself some derision and for the great river a name that stuck. Let sleeping dogs lie - who wants to rouse 'em? --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _David Copperfield_, Ch. 39 [1850] Though I've belted you an' flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din! --Rudyard Kipling (18651936) English writer and poet. _Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads_, "Gunga Din" st. 5, [1892, 1893] Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory. --Norman Vincent Peale (18981993) American preacher and author. - News item [10 August 2006] Police in Toledo, Ohio, have rescued dozens of Australian wombats from a man who was trying unsuccessfully to train them to fight. 'The (expletive) who sold them to me said they were vicious killers . . . I paid 300 bucks for a pair of eucalyptus-leaf eating retards who just stare at each other with a dull glare,' the man said. - People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. --Abigail Van Buren (1918 ) American advice columnist. By a sudden and adroit movement I placed my left eye against his fist. --Artemus Ward [Charles Farrar Browne] (18341867) American humorist and writer. - There once were two cats of Kilkenny, Each thought there was one cat too many; So they fought and they fit, And they scratched and they bit, Till, excepting their nails and the tips of their tails, Instead of two cats there weren't any. --anon. ^ HOW THE FIGHT STARTED I rear-ended a car this morning. So there we were alongside the road and the driver slowly gets out of the car. . . And you know how you just get so stressed and life-stuff seems to get funny? Well, I could not believe it. He was a DWARF! He storms over to my car, looks up at me and says, '' I AM NOT HAPPY!'' So, I look down at him and say, ''Well, then which one are you?'' ...... And that's when the fight started! ^ ----- affray [uh-FRAY], noun: A tumultuous assault or quarrel; a brawl. Synonyms: wrangle, scuffle, fracas, brawl, uproar, melee, Similar: tussle, skirmish, tumult, strife agon [AH-gahn; ah-GOHN], noun: A struggle or contest; conflict; especially between the protagonist and antagonist in a literary work. donnybrook [DON-ee-brook], noun: 1. A brawl; a free-for-all. 2. A heated quarrel or dispute. Ex.: Wine and talk flow freely, so much so that the meal ends with a Rooney family donnybrook over, typically enough, religion and politics. --Howard Frank Mosher, "24 Hours in Due East, S.C.," _New York Times_ [7 April 1991] A donnybrook is so called after Donnybrook, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin that once held an annual fair known for its brawls. fracas (noun) 1. A noisy disturbance or quarrel. Syn.: brawl, affray, fray, commotion, altercation Related: fight, disturbance, melee, uproar, disorder, dispute melee [MAY-lay; may-LAY], noun: 1. A fight or hand-to-hand struggle in which the combatants are mingled in one confused mass. 2. A confused conflict or mingling. pugnacious [puhg-NAY-shuhs], adjective: Inclined to fight; combative; quarrelsome. . . see "BLAME" see "FAULT" Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else. --Thomas Fuller (16541734) English writer and physician. Comp., _Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs_ [1732] By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In Washington Irving _The Crayon Miscellany_ [1885] p. 229. These men (chronic fault-finders) should consider that it is their envy which deforms everything, and that the ugliness is not in the object, but in the eye. --Sir Richard Steele (16721729) Irish-born essayist and dramatist. - There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it ill behooves any of us To find fault with the rest of us. --anon. ----- captious [KAP-shuhs], adj. 1. Marked by a disposition to find fault or raise objections. 2. Calculated to entrap or confuse, as in an argument. cavil [KAV-uhl], intransitive verb: To raise trivial or frivolous objections; to find fault without good reason. querulous (adj.) Tending to complain, inclined to complain or find fault. . . see "HOME & FAMILY" for related links How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn-evenings come. --Robert Browning (18121889) English poet. "By the Fireside" [1855] ----- immolate [IM-uh-layt], transitive verb: 1. To sacrifice; to offer in sacrifice; to kill as a sacrificial victim. 2. To kill or destroy, often by fire. inglenook (noun) ['ing-gl-nUk] The corner of a large open fireplace with space on either side of the hearth or built-in stove. In medieval times, fires were located in the middle of the room and the smoke wandered freely up through the thatched roof. Later on, the fire (ingle) was moved to a side wall and a smoke cover was added. Walls were next added on either side of the hearth, to form a room within a room. People could walk in and out of an inglenook fireplace or sit on the ingle-benches in its inglenooks to keep warm.  FISH . . see "ANIMALS" for related links There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool. --L.M. [Louis Malcolm] Boyd (19272007) American newspaper columnist. - Kangal, Turkey Tucked between brown hills in central Turkey is a natural hot spring where, for a fee, you can become fish food. Dip in a hand or foot, and within seconds small fish will swarm, bump and nibble it. Stand above the pools, and the fish will gather below, waiting. The scaly swimmers the "Doctor Fish of Kangal" supposedly have curative powers. But in this unusual case of adaptive ecology, the human visitors may be helping the fish more than themselves. These fish have acquired a taste for humans largely because they have little choice. The spring is too hot to sustain enough algae and plankton to feed them all. In the past, the fish were able to move between the spring and a creek that runs nearby. But after learning of a story about a local shepherd whose wounded leg healed after being dipped into the spring in 1917, builders walled off the spring from the creek in the 1950s to preserve a captive school. A Turkish family has now constructed a hotel, villas and a playground and markets the resort to psoriasis patients. Some 3,000 people every year pay for the privilege of sitting in the spring and allowing these omnivores to eat their dead skin, a process that may stimulate new skin growth or relax patients and thereby ease stress-triggered psoriasis. --Matt Mossman _Scientific American Magazine_ [June 2007], "Fish That Go Skin-Deep" - Fish, to taste right, must swim three times in water, in butter, and in wine. --Polish proverb -- Boaters Beware: Things Are Jumping On Missouri River High-Flying Carp Pose Threat To Fishermen, U.S. Says; Solution: Eat Them By John H. Fialka November 8, 2006 _The Wall Street Journal_ COLUMBIA, Mo. Fishermen used to joke that when the fish are biting on the Missouri River, "they're practically jumping into the boat." To Duane Chapman, this isn't funny any more. Almost every time he goes out in his 22-foot skiff, fish jump in or over his boat. He has been repeatedly battered by 20-pound flying fish, which he compares to slimy bowling balls. Not long ago, an incoming fish slammed into the boat's throttle, sending the skiff roaring into a mud bank. These fish called Asian silver carp were imported to the U.S. in the 1960s. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is taking aim at the species. It's proposing a ban on the importation and interstate transportation of the fish, saying, "Silver carp have leaped into moving boats injuring people and damaging equipment." [ . . . ] [The carp] have a peculiar habit: Upon hearing the rumble of a motorboat, or any other noise they deem strange, they leap as high as eight feet in the air, arcing into and around boats like silvery missiles. [ . . . ] The native habitat for the Asian silver carp is the Yangtze River in China. The fish were brought to the U.S. to help clean up algae and other microscopic wastes at fish farms and municipal waste-treatment plants. Some escaped into the Mississippi River and migrated to the Missouri and the Ohio rivers. Now, they inhabit the waters of 15 states, and experts worry the Great Lakes will be next. [ . . . ] [Betty DeFord] organized the "Redneck Rodeo," a fishing tournament on a backwater of the Illinois River near her tavern. Fishermen wearing protective gear ranging from garbage bags to football helmets compete in small boats, using hand-held nets. The crew that snatches the most fish out of the air in three hours wins $300. In September, at the third annual rodeo, 78 boats caught 1,840 of the fish. Mrs. DeFord says that a man from Springfield, Ill., holding his dip net and peering into the water got smacked in the face by a carp and went to the local hospital with a broken nose and blackened eyes. "But then he came back, finished the tournament and vowed he would be back next year," she says. [ . . . ] TOPICAL Eat More Fish! By Willie Soon and Robert Ferguson August 15, 2005 Perhaps the most repeated refrain driving the mercury alarmism campaign is that "630,000 American babies are born each year" with elevated concentrations of mercury in their blood, with the potential for "permanent brain damage and learning disabilities." These infants are said to be "poisoned" at birth because their mothers consumed fish containing microtraces of mercury. As a result, pregnant women are being terrified away from fish consumption, and thus denied a source of nutrition shown to enhance both fetal brain development and maternal health. The genesis of this myth was the 2003 Centers for Disease Control release of its results from the 1999-2000 nutrition and health survey. It was reported that 8% of women of childbearing age (1649 years old) had blood mercury concentrations above the so-called "safe" mercury reference dose established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since there are over four million births in the U.S. annually, mercury opponents and several government scientists extrapolated that at least 320,000 babies born are "at risk" in the U.S. each year due to "unsafe" mercury levels in their mother's blood. In January 2004, an EPA employee revised the number of babies born at risk upward to 630,000, based on "new" information that mercury in maternal cord blood (shared with the fetus) is more concentrated than in body blood. But the information was not "new," it was a double-counting, since the EPA had already accounted for the blood-concentration difference in 2001, helping make its "safe" mercury dose the most stringent in the world. It must be recognized that the EPA's safe mercury dose is based on inappropriate studies of people who consume whale meat and blubber (a unique diet very different from typical U.S. consumption) containing multiple chemicals PCBs, cadmium, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, DDT, etc. of which mercury is only one. There are other reasons why mercury alarmists' emotive claims are neither justified nor credible. For example, a recent survey in Japan reported that 87% of the population, including 74% of Japanese women of child-bearing age, had mercury concentrations above EPA's "safe" level. Logically, one must either conclude that generations of Japanese are "brain-damaged" (and suffering from severe and permanent learning deficits), or that EPA's "safe" mercury dose is simply arbitrary and extreme. Similarly, children in grades four and eight from traditionally high-fish-consumption cultures in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong consistently outperformed U.S. students on international standardized math and science tests. This despite the fact that Hong Kong children have mean blood mercury levels some 10 times higher than U.S. children. Even the mummified remains of four Aleutian infants dated to 1445 A.D. contained higher mean mercury levels than young children reported in the CDC surveys. None of these findings are surprising, considering numerous studies report no adverse affects on children from maternal fish consumption as high as 12-14 meals per week of the kinds of fish widely available in U.S. markets and restaurants. Only benefits have been reported, such as superior eyesight, higher child mental development scores, less hyperactivity, good heart and brain function, and improved intelligence at four years of age. Finally, an examination of the actual CDC data shows that the 19992000 survey documented seven out of 705 children (or 1%) with blood mercury above the EPA's "safe" mercury dose, while the 20012002 survey found only four out of 872 children (or 0.5%) exceeding it. More importantly, even the highest mercury level measured in this four-year survey has a safety cushion of more than 500% of the lowest exposure level of concern. Yet hardly anyone is rushing to report these important updates, let alone downward revisions in the numbers of children "at risk." Instead, one observes repetition of the near-religious dogma that "600,000-plus American children are born each year" at risk of "birth defects, including mental retardation and problems with motor skills." Basing enormously consequential energy and health policies both nationally and internationally on myth is both irresponsible and harmful. Mr. Soon is chief science researcher, and Mr. Ferguson executive director, of the Center for Science and Public Policy. ---- http://netvet.wustl.edu/fish.htm  . . see "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links see "FOOD & DRINK" for related links ^^ Calvin Coolidge became an enthusiastic angler, but his skill did not match his keenness. Asked how many trout there were in one of his favorite fishing places, Coolidge replied that there were estimated to be about forty-five thousand. Then he added, "I haven't caught them all yet, but I've intimidated them." --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard ^^ - THE FISHING CURE There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul Like a day on a stream, Back on the banks of the old fishing hole Where a fellow can dream. There's nothing so good for a man as to flee From the city and lie Full length in the shade of a whispering tree And gaze at the sky. Out there where the strife and the greed are forgot And the struggle for pelf, A man can get rid of each taint and each spot And clean up himself; He can be what he wanted to be when a boy, If only in dreams; And revel once more in the depths of a joy That's as real as it seems. The things that he hates never follow him there The jar of the street, The rivalries petty, the struggling unfair For the open is sweet. In purity's realm he can rest and be clean, Be he humble or great, And as peaceful his soul may become as the scene That his eyes contemplate. It is good for the world that men hunger to go To the banks of a stream, And weary of sham and of pomp and of show They have somewhere to dream. For this life would be dreary and sordid and base Did they not now and then Seek refreshment and calm in God's wide, open space And come back to be men. --Edgar Guest (18811959) American poet. _A Heap O' Livin'_ [1916] - We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has not the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching shrieking fish. --Leigh [James Henry] Hunt (17841859) English essayist, critic, journalist, and poet. Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous almost of pedantic veracity, that the experienced angler is seen. --Jerome K Jerome (18591927) English novelist and playwright. Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing to a stick and a string with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Attributed, in Hawker _Instructions to Young Sportsmen [1859]; also attributed to Jonathan Swift in "The Indicator" [27 October 1819] {ODTQ}. ^ Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] [18351910] American humorist, writer, and lecturer. Mark Twain loved to brag about his hunting and fishing exploits. He once spent three weeks fishing in the Maine woods, regardless of the fact it was the state's closed season for fishing. Relaxing in the lounge car of the train on his return journey to New York, his catch iced down in the baggage car, he looked for someone to whom he could relate the story of his successful holiday. The stranger to whom he began to boast of his sizable catch appeared at first unresponsive, then positively grim. 'By the way, who are you, sir?' inquired Twain airily. 'I'm the state game warden,' was the unwelcome response. 'Who are you?' Twain nearly swallowed his cigar. 'Well, to be perfectly truthful, warden,' he said hastily, 'I'm the biggest damn liar in the whole United States.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. --Steven Wright (1955 ) American writer and actor.  FLAG . . see: "PATRIOTISM" I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government . . . passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don't think I would do it. I've always felt that I lived in a country . . . where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there's no condemnation . . . from a government authority. --Jimmy Carter (1924 ) American Democratic statesman, President [19771981]. Flag burning? I think about the time June and I went to Viet Nam in 1969 and saw the burning flesh. Whether the war was right or not, a lot of people sacrificed their lives. I cherish all the freedom we have, including the freedom to burn flags. But I also have the freedom to bear arms, and if you burn my flag, I'll shoot you. --Johnny Cash (19322003) American country singer and songwriter. (In Raymond Obstfeld's _Twang: The Ultimate Book of Country Music Quotations_ [1997], "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer") - [. . . ] You're a grand old flag, You're a high-flying flag, And forever in peace may you wave. You're the emblem of The land I love, The home of the free and the brave. Ev'ry heart beats true Under Red, White and Blue, Where there's never a boast or brag. But should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag. [ . . . ] --George M. Cohan (18781942) American songwriter, dramatist, and producer. You're a Grand Old Flag" [1906 song] from the musical _George Washington Jr._. - It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the man whose people have been here many generations. --Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. (18501924) Republican U.S. senator [18931924]. If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution. --Matthew Stanley Quay (18331904) American politician. Political boss of Pennsylvania [1886]. Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of Freedom. --George Frederick Root (18201895) American musician and music publisher. "The Battle Cry of Freedom" [1863] -- Don't tread on me. --Motto of the first official American flag; first raised by Lieutenant John Paul Jones in Commodore Esek Hopkin's flagship "Alfred" [3 December 1775]. ----- vexillology [vek-sil-AHL-uh-jee], noun: The study of flags. end page | FABLE - FAME | FAILURE | FAMILIARITY - FANTASY | FARMING - FATE | FATHERS - FEELINGS | FEMINISTS - FIFTIES (THE) | FIFTY - FLAG | FLATTERY - FOLLOWERS | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 1 (A-O) | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 2 (P-Z) | FOOLISH - FORESIGHT | FOREST - FRAUDS | FREE - FREE TRADE | FREEDOM | FREUD - (THE) - FRIENDS | FRUGAL - FUTURE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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