Paul Jennings Quotes

The probability of a piece of toast and marmalade dropped on the floor landing marmalade-side-down, is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

At least I knew that if someone broke in the alarm was so annoying that he would immediately leave. It's like how I feel when I walk into a store in December and that awful Paul McCartney song 'Wonderful Christmastime' is playing. Not worth it. I'm out of here even though I could have finished all my holiday shopping in one place.

If anyone has made you feel invisible or less-than, write a new narrative on your heart. The Bible was used to subjugate women for centuries, but the New Testament reveals women leading the church, prophesying, teaching, and co-laboring with men. Let’s flourish under Paul’s instruction: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches. And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo. And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

This is why we live and breathe: for the love of Jesus, for the love of our own souls, for the love of our families and people, for the love of our neighbors and this world. This is all that will last. Honestly, it is all that matters. Because as Paul basically said: We can have our junk together in a thousand areas, but if we don’t have love, we are totally bankrupt. Get this right and everything else follows. Get it wrong, and life becomes bitter, fear-based, and lonely. Dear ones, it doesn’t have to be.

A feu mon père, à mon grand-père, familiers des deuxièmes balcons, la hiérarchie sociale du théâtre avait donné le goût du cérémonial: quand beaucoup d'hommes sont ensemble, il faut les séparer par des rites ou bien ils se massacrent. Le cinéma prouvait le contraire : plutôt que par une fête, ce public si mêlé semblait réuni par une catastrophe; morte, l'étiquette démasquait enfin le véritable lien des hommes, l'adhérence. Je pris en dégoût les cérémonies, j'adorai les foules; j'en ai vu de toute sorte mais je n'ai pas retrouvé cette nudité, cette présence sans recul de chacun à tous, ce rêve éveillé, cette conscience obscure du danger d'être homme qu'en 1940, dans le Stalag XII D.

it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it isn’t true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only blesses rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India, China, South America, Russia, rural Appalachia, inner-city America, and everywhere else a sincere believer remains poor. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If doctrine elevates a woman’s married-with-children status as her highest calling, it isn’t true, because that omits single believers (whose status Paul considered preferable), widows, the childless by choice or fate or loss, the divorced, and the celibate gay. If these folks are second-class citizens in the kingdom because they aren’t married with children, then God just excluded millions of people from gospel work, and I guess they should just eat rocks and die. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. Theology is either true everywhere or it isn’t true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God Narrative and sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long. It lends restraint when declaring what God does or does not think, because sometimes my portrayal of God’s ways sounds suspiciously like the American Dream and I had better check myself. Because of the Haitian single mom. Maybe I should speak less for God. This brings me to the question at hand, another popular subject I am asked to pontificate on: What is my calling? (See also: How do I know my calling? When did you know your calling? How can I get your calling? Has God told you my calling? Can you get me out of my calling?) Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to

I turned forty this year. Forty! Which is so weird because I’ve always been young. I’ve been young my whole life, as a matter of fact. No matter how I dissect this, I’ve aged out of the “young” category and graduated to the “middle” group. My brain feels confused about this because I am so juvenile. I make up my own words to hip-hop songs and quote Paul Rudd as a parenting strategy. Surely I am a preteen.

Even though I’ve written more than a hundred short stories I always think that I will never come up with another decent one. It’s agony.

BOOKS/AUTHORS ON THE BACKS OF LIBRARY CARDS #1 Miguel Fernandez Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert/ No, David! by David Shannon #2 Akimi Hughes One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss/Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger #3 Andrew Peckleman Six Days of the Condor by James Grady/ Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott #4 Bridgette Wadge Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume/ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling #5 Sierra Russell The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder/ The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin #6 Yasmeen Smith-Snyder Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne/The Yak Who Yelled Yuck by Carol Pugliano-Martin #7 Sean Keegan Olivia by Ian Falconer/Unreal! by Paul Jennings #8 Haley Daley Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm/ A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle #9 Rose Vermette All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor/ Scat by Carl Hiaasen #10 Kayla Corson Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames/Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein #11 UNKNOWN/CHARLES CHILTINGTON #12 Kyle Keeley I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt/ The Napping House by Audrey

The old mansion was soon burning like

depths of the shadows. I wanted to run but

walked off to his car. He

On reconnaît là le raisonnement même qui a permis à Saint Paul, Freud, Suzanne Lilar (1969), Saint-Augustin, Ménie Grégoire, et j'en passe, de fonder leur théorie de la "féminité". On reconnaît là le raisonnement qui permet d'inférer "scientifiquement" la "passivité" des femmes, êtres totaux dotées de conscience, de la passivité imputée à... l'ovule dans le procès de procréation, et l' "activité" des hommes, êtres totaux, etc., de l'activité prêtée à... un spermatozoïde qui n'en peut mais, lors du même procès.

While I was a servant to Mr. Webster, he often sent me to her with a market-basket full of provisions, and told me whenever I saw anything in the house that I thought she was in need of, to take it to her. I often did this, and occasionally gave her small sums from my own pocket, though I had years before bought my freedom of her.

RESISTENTIALISM. Name for a mock-academic theory to describe “seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects.” In other words, a war is being fought between humans and inanimate objects, and all the little annoyances objects inflict on people throughout the day are battles between the two. The term was coined by British humorist Paul Jennings in a piece titled “Report on Resistentialism,” published in the Spectator in April 1948 and reprinted in the New York Times and elsewhere. The slogan of resistentialism is “Les choses sont contre nous”—”Things are against us.

Luke’s story from this point to its end is simple: Paul in prison, Paul chained, Paul facing the threat of death yet faithful to the resurrected Jesus

If anyone has made you feel invisible or less-than, write a new narrative on your heart. The Bible was used to subjugate women for centuries, but the New Testament reveals women leading the church, prophesying, teaching, and co-laboring with men. Let's flourish under Paul's instruction: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth" (2 Tim 2:15).

Religious Children Are Less Altruistic A recent study of 1,170 children from six countries—United States, Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, and Turkey—found that children raised in religious homes were not as good at sharing and more likely to be punitive when compared to children raised in more secular homes. The author of the study said in an interview, “In our study, kids from atheist and nonreligious families were, in fact, more generous. . . . Together, these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism. They challenge the view that religiosity facilitates pro-social behavior, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development—suggesting the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it does just the opposite.”5 When one understands the law of worship, such a finding is no surprise; it is the predictable and unavoidable outcome when the predominant worldview of God is that of an authoritarian dictator who operates on imposed law. This is a function of design law—the law of worship—by beholding we become changed. We really are transformed into the image of the god we worship. It is just as the prophet Jeremiah said, “They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves” (Jer. 2:5). Or as Paul said, “Because those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge about God, he has given them over to corrupted minds” (Rom. 1:28 GNT). Believing the wrong view of God can result in much more tragic outcomes than mere failure to share. In fact, there isn’t anything much more dangerous than someone on a mission for God who doesn’t actually know him!