Son of Groucho

"“It's really humiliating to be shaking a cup 24 hours a day and people just look at you like you some kind of little bum. ... I have had people that walk past me and say, 'Get a job, bum!' And I say, 'Wait a minute — I'm not a bum, I'm a human being.'"" - Son of Groucho

See also "£518,000 for personalised plate" (below)... - Son of Groucho

"A British record sum of £518,000 including taxes and fees has been paid for a personalised registration at auction. The plate '25 O' was sold at a three-day DVLA event in Cardiff marking the 25th anniversary of the Personalised Registrations sales. The buyer, John Collins, owns Talacrest, a dealer in rare classic Ferraris and just hours after paying £130,320 for the registration '250 L' he spent almost five times as much on '25 O'. Both registrations are already destined for classic Ferraris; '25 O' will be worn by a 250 SWB once owned by Eric Clapton, while '250 L' will go on to a 1964 Ferrari Lusso. Moments after his success, Mr Collins said: "I was just determined to own them, it was just a case of how much I was going to have to pay for the privilege." Asked just how much he was prepared to pay for 25 O, Mr Collins replied: "I'm not too sure, it could possibly have been the first £1 million personalised registration!" Jody Davies, DVLA Personalised Registrations' events manager, said: "What a spectacular way to mark our 150th auction during our 25th Anniversary year. While we had high hopes for both registrations, we never dreamt they would be so successful and enable us to make history for the DVLA." The other highest sellers so far in the sale include 'CU11 ENS' £26,648), 'FU11 ERS'(£23,202)and '1 HJW' (£21,084)." - Son of Groucho

The World has truly gone mad... - Son of Groucho

"Christmas cards, shopping lists and what else? The occasions in which we write by hand are fewer and fewer, says Neil Hallows. So is the ancient art form of handwriting dying out? A century from now, our handwriting may only be legible to experts. For some, that is already the case. But writer Kitty Burns Florey says the art of handwriting is declining so fast that ordinary, joined-up script may become as hard to read as a medieval manuscript. "When your great-great-grandchildren find that letter of yours in the attic, they'll have to take it to a specialist, an old guy at the library who would decipher the strange symbols for them," says Ms Florey, author of the newly-published Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting." - Son of Groucho

I love writing by hand on all the things. Journals, letters, cards. Notes for work projects. - Corinne L

"Most of us claim we want to be happy—to have meaningful lives, enjoy ourselves, experience fulfillment, and share love and friendship with other people and maybe other species, like dogs, cats, birds, and whatnot. Strangely enough, however, some people act as if they just want to be miserable, and they succeed remarkably at inviting misery into their lives, even though they get little apparent benefit from it, since being miserable doesn’t help them find lovers and friends, get better jobs, make more money, or go on more interesting vacations. Why do they do this? After perusing the output of some of the finest brains in the therapy profession, I’ve come to the conclusion that misery is an art form, and the satisfaction people seem to find in it reflects the creative effort required to cultivate it. In other words, when your living conditions are stable, peaceful, and prosperous—no civil wars raging in your streets, no mass hunger, no epidemic disease, no vexation from poverty—making yourself miserable is a craft all its own, requiring imagination, vision, and ingenuity. It can even give life a distinctive meaning. So if you aspire to make yourself miserable, what are the best, most proven techniques for doing it? Let’s exclude some obvious ways, like doing drugs, committing crimes, gambling, and beating up your spouse or neighbor. Subtler strategies, ones that won’t lead anyone to suspect that you’re acting deliberately, can be highly effective. But you need to pretend that you want to be happy, like everybody else, or people won’t take your misery seriously. The real art is to behave in ways that’ll bring on misery while allowing you to claim that you’re an innocent victim, ideally of the very people from whom you’re forcibly extracting compassion and pity. Here, I cover most areas of life, such as family, work, friends, and romantic partners. These areas will overlap nicely, since you can’t ruin your life without ruining your marriage and maybe your relationships with your children and friends. It’s inevitable that as you make yourself miserable, you’ll be making those around you miserable also, at least until they leave you—which will give you another reason to feel miserable. So it’s important to keep in mind the benefits you’re accruing in your misery. • When you’re miserable, people feel sorry for you. Not only that, they often feel obscurely guilty, as if your misery might somehow be their fault. This is good! There’s power in making other people feel guilty. The people who love you and those who depend on you will walk on eggshells to make sure that they don’t say or do anything that will increase your misery. • When you’re miserable, since you have no hopes and expect nothing good to happen, you can’t be disappointed or disillusioned. • Being miserable can give the impression that you’re a wise and worldly person, especially if you’re miserable not just about your life, but about society in general. You can project an aura of someone burdened by a form of profound, tragic, existential knowledge that happy, shallow people can’t possibly appreciate." - Son of Groucho

Familiar? - Son of Groucho

"What is meditation? Why should I meditate? Exactly how do I meditate? Isn’t it just for hippies? Learn the answers to those questions and more in this comprehensive guide." - Son of Groucho

"WASHINGTON—In a 45-minute video posted on Tibetan websites Thursday, Tsuglag Rinpoche, leader of the Buddhist extremist group Kammaṭṭhāna, threatened to soon inflict a wave of peace and tranquility on the West. Speaking in front of a nondescript altar surrounded by candles, burning sticks of incense, and a small golden statue of the Buddha, Rinpoche did not specify when or where an assault of profound inner stillness would occur, but stated in no uncertain terms that the fundamentalist Buddhist cell plans to target all Western suffering. “In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West,” said Rinpoche, adding that all enemies of a freely flowing, unfettered state of mind will be “besieged with pure, everlasting happiness.” “No city will be spared from spiritual harmony. We will bring about the end to all Western pain and anxiety, to all destructive cravings, to all greed, delusion, and misplaced desire. Indeed, we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.” “Wisdom and virtue to America!” continued Rinpoche. “Wisdom and virtue to all living things on earth!” According to reports, Rinpoche stressed throughout his address that Kammaṭṭhāna soldiers would continue waging a tireless holy war on Western feelings of emptiness and negativity for as long as necessary, noting that “a jug fills drop by drop” and that “it is better to travel well than to arrive.” The extremist leader specifically criticized the United States for its “blatant disregard of karmic balance within the universe” and ominously claimed that Americans will “one day soon” experience the highest form of metaphysical equilibrium through a union of both body and mind. Rinpoche also said all Western nations would “pay a heavy price in negative thinking and self-doubt” if they do not immediately engage in serious introspection and true spiritual liberation. Sources confirmed the video then featured an uninterrupted 19-minute clip of water quietly flowing between rocks in a small forest creek." - Son of Groucho

A VERY long way! - Son of Groucho