Ink Sinking Into Me Like I Was Paper

After reading my brother's recent blogs about his record collection and his favorite smells, I started thinking about what makes a difference in my life. I decided that my musical choices are more determined by my mood, rather than determining it. And, while I do enjoy a select few smells, they have to be strong to break through my god-like allergies. But, what I read seems to have an effect on how I live -- so, here are a few selections:

Once, debating why man had invented sports, Sam [Kellerman] unloaded this haymaker: "Sports is man's joke on God, Max. You see, God says to man, 'I've created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you'll have to grapple with life and death and in the end you'll die anyway, and it won't really matter.' So man says to God, 'Oh, yeah? Within your universe we're going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn't matter, and we'll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.'"
-Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated, April 17, 2006

Dr. Fell's delight animated the whole room. "I am taking the water. The term has a fine, spacious, adventurous sound. But the actual performance falls short of swashbuckling: and I am seldom tempted to strike up a drinking-song after my tenth or fifteenth pint."
"But are you supposed to take it in that quantity, sir?"
"All drinkables are supposed to be taken in that quantity," said Dr. Fell firmly. "If I cannot do the thing handsomely, I am not going to do it at all."
-John Dickson Carr, The Problem of the Green Capsule, 1939

Make the most of it
A coast to coast
Toast of it
For what you think
Has been God-sent to you
Has only been lent to you.
-Leo Marks, an original poem issued as the basis of a code by the British Special Operations Executive in February 1944 to the wireless radio operator Denise Bloch (Code-named Ambroise.) She was executed at Ravensbruck in 1945, from the book "Between Silk and Cyanide"