A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Medicine often being small doses of poison which your body wants to reject. So you've got to fool your gag reflex and taste buds.

One better though apparently is honey on a razor blade. I guess it's an old buddhist metaphor I hadn't heard of until today. The idea of putting up with a lot of pain in order to gain what you think you want and are convinced you desperately need.

Don't know if this is factual but a friend was just telling me about ranchers who put honey on razor blades to kill wolves. Even once the wolves cut their tongues they continued to lick because tasting their own blood duped them into believing they were eating something good and they kept chewing. Knowing people as I do this is easy to believe true or not.

Isn't that Mormonism? Honey on a razor blade?

The "Honey" of the CK complete with "Blissful Eternal Life with Your Loved Ones" assuages the cold harsh treatment of family if said family members are judged to be not holding tight to the rod as they should. It's for their own good! The promise of the CK is the "Spoonful of Sugar" making it possible to even act against your own best interest, denying your own uniquely natural self. And, ending up "licking your own blood" in the process--becoming your own worst enemy. Cuz, in the end, a cult specialty is teaching you to self administer the indoctrination once they have things up and running. You take the controls.


Which brings me to one of my all time favorite quotes of all time favorite quotes which has been one of my all time favorite quotes for a long, long time:

"Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.". --Nikos Kazantzakis






The first straight razor was invented in 1680 in Sheffield, England. It was made of steel. The bees were not happy about this. Nor were the wolves. But like most awful things that happen in life--there is nothing you can do. I'm not sure the world needs any more inventions.

The straight razor created one of only a few number of intense master/servant relationships, wherein the servant intimately held the master's safety, well-being and even life in his or her hands.

what does it say about an individual that he or she could do so?

Which brings us to the confessional...

Can I safely assume that some of us will take certain stories and bits of information to the grave?

Please!  I am not soliciting any of that information!!  Just know that you're likely not alone if you have unrepeated stories housed in that three pound lump of silly putty nestled between your ears.

"A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." Then there was this guy who was diabetic...

Ha. Too good!

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving."

- Colonel Kurtz

"The horror. The horror."

--Ibid.

No matter how you slice it, escargot is really just a snail.

--Ibid

Nice!

...about the Mary Poppins stories is the private life of its author, P. L. Travers (a pen name). Per the Wikipedia entry at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._L._Travers

"Travers never married.

Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with men throughout her life, she lived for more than a decade with Madge Burnand, daughter of Sir Francis Burnand, a playwright and the former editor of Punch. They shared a London flat from 1927 to 1934, then moved to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, East Sussex, where Travers published the first of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of one biographer, was "intense", but equally ambiguous.

At the age of 40, two years after moving out on her own, Travers adopted a baby boy from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild of Joseph Hone, the first biographer of George Moore and W. B. Yeats, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unaware of his true parentage or the existence of any siblings until the age of 17, when Anthony Hone, his twin brother, came to London and knocked on the door of Travers's house at 50 Smith Street, Chelsea. He had been drinking and demanded to see his brother. Travers refused and threatened to call the police. Anthony left but, soon after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his brother and found him in a pub on King's Road.

Anthony had been fostered and raised by the family of the essayist Hubert Butler in Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had three grandchildren."

The speculation, mentioned elsewhere in the article, is that Miss Travers was an undercover lesbian, certainly something that at the time could not be revealed by an author of children's books--particularly a series like Mary Poppins.

Undercover lesbian.

LOL. Haven't heard that label before.

It's sad though, how people can't just be how they are.

I'm reading a book at the moment that's set during WWII (I can't usually stand to read about war but this one is amazing and hooked me instantly when I accidentally glanced at page 1). One of the main characters is a woman who loved a woman but in the 1940s that was something that couldn't be out in the open (and I know at other times too).

It makes me think of all the people who had to keep secrets when they would have chosen differently if they could.

And yes, I realize, that war is still being waged.

I'm looking for good books to read. Fiction or nonfiction, doesn't matter. I actually haven't read anything since the divorce,

Gimme a stack of books to read! I am almost in the middle of Educated, which was talked about elsewhere. So far, it's very sad, but it will get better in the second half.

Mormons are practically perfect in every way.

Mary Poppins is apt. Our concern for others and the environment is used to abuse us all the time now.