*promote the adorable feathery furball!

I'm taking care of two 10 year old kittens right now myself. So adorable.

Wow ... mine aren't this adorable. They are just as tenacious though!

Totally adorable...upvote

*promote love me some Goldblum ...adored him in the short lived TV series Raines

agreed! I adore this man

I just translated the lyrics. Damn, I forgot how difficult translating poetry can be. It took me quite some time. I tried to translate it as closely to the German meaning as possible, while still upholding or at least emulating some aspects of the poetic style of the original.

"Spring Greeting

1. (intro)
One beautiful spring day
A spring greeting – a little flower
Lay dying by the wayside

The poor thing had been plucked
Its existence doomed – Thrown away
To feed Death alone

2.
As I bowed down
To eye this misery
That bespoke brutal workings
Suggesting no remorse
A word escaped my throat
– Murder!

For this flower, so fragile
Was appallingly, purposely plucked
By the wayside, I assume
In a rush of ecstasy, absent-mindedly,
Someone bowed down
And bemused, elated, blushed,
In spring rapture, deeply delighted,
Discovered, clutched and killed it

Chorus:
And I asked myself, who seeks,
Against all grace and goodness,
To take such beauty's life
Executed, slaughtered
So disempowered, off-handedly
This peaceful blossom
So discarded and despised
Oh forbid

3.
The fool, he was so moved
That he had no doubt
His mind was captivated
By its splendor, which he abducted
And unscrupulously corrupted
As he took it – gave himself to it
Only then he became aware - it was dying

And suddenly the realization
Flashed through his mind and all too honestly
Comprehension became confession
Into his heart, painfully,
His misdeed crept, all too gravely

Chorus:
And he asked himself, who seeks,
Against all grace and goodness,
To take such beauty's life
Executed, slaughtered
So disempowered, off-handedly
This peaceful blossom
So discarded and despised
Oh forbid

4. (Bridge)
Shocked by his fallibility
He threw the beauty into the sand
Irritated by his misdeed
He retreated from his disgrace
‘Though he had desired the little flower,
Loved, adored, admired it,
He had not respected it
And this splendor by the wayside
Is now concluded and passed

Chorus:
And he asked himself, who seeks,
Against all grace and goodness,
To take such beauty's life
Executed, slaughtered
So disempowered, off-handedly
This peaceful blossom
So discarded and despised
Oh forbid

And he asked himself, who seeks,
Against all grace and goodness,
To take such beauty's life
Executed, slaughtered
So disempowered, off-handedly
This peaceful blossom
So discarded and despised
Man forbid

5. (outro)
One beautiful spring day
A spring greeting – a little flower
Lay dying by the wayside

Bereaved of the beautiful springtime
Of existence – doomed – of lust itself
A victim of vain humanity

It was me. It was me. I'm sorry.
It was me. It was me. Now I'm sorry."

NO, a thousand times NO, to the Young Turks

NO to any animal suffering of any kind ... I just can't unsee that no matter how happy the ending!

NO to truth distorters as well as overtly religious anything

NO to racism in any format


***************************************
Unlike Eric I adore the Slo Mo Guys ... would enjoy spending the day with them just once and I delight in the cynical smartass that is Bill Maher

***************************************

*promote gluttony of the most adorable kind

This was adorable *promote

It certainly looks like it. I'm not sure if it was but it contributed to the list of reasons I find it so adorable.

I want to make an animatronic toy like this, where each kitten mechanism has a camera that follows any motion detected.

About as useless as those sleeping cat/puppy toys, but I spare no expense when it comes to adorable constructs.

@ChaosEngine

i do not see anyone here defending anything.

now maybe we can view stephen's commentary "dismissive and belittling" as @entr0py pointed out,but i think the deeper issue was prefaced quite succinctly by stephen in his characterization of american,and western societies,as being "infantilized".

where words have become the final bastion of totality in communication and are judged strictly on a word by word basis.so much so that some on the left have been pushing harder and harder to have certain words removed from our lexicon,because they represent negative thoughts/feelings/actions or they may represent a trauma,or horrific violent memory for some people.

but this is the wrong approach.
excising words will not erase those feelings/thoughts/emotions.this will just force people to come up or use different terminology to express those feelings/thoughts.actions that once had words to at least to attempt to express those horrors and/or offenses.

which will just equate to a whole new slew of verbiage being found offensive and in dire need of being castrated from our collective vocabulary.

yet the left (extreme left i grant) appears hell bent on not only attempting to control speech but to also judge those who DO use speech that they find offensive.

this is censorship with prejudice and to claim otherwise is the lie.

just look at your first comment.
you "used" to like stephen fry's opinion,until he became callous and dismissive with what?

words.

but do you REALLY think his attitude and compassion towards those who have suffered emotional trauma is truly dismissive?

well..i do not think so.i have spoken to you enough times to have a modicum of understandings in regards to you,as a person,that you have far more depth of character.

yet it is the WORDS that have hung you up.

look man,words are inert.they are things that are only given life,meaning and context when we add our own subjectivity to them.

words are inadequate.they will ALWAYS be inadequate.
which is why we admire and praise those of us who have a command of words that can reach into our own understandings and extract meaning in a way that blossoms like a spring flower and can create worlds in which we can play,and even share with other people.

i am intimately aware of this deficiency.i do not have an economy of words,and only on rare occasions can i relay,convey and express with ANY form of reductionism.

i struggle to express not only my opinion,but the intent,humanity and compassion of my opinion.

if the extreme left gets their way,the tools we have to express ourselves becomes lesser.

and in the process,WE become lesser.because the tools for dissent,debate,discussion and even..ironically..to expose the more venal and bigoted of our society,will have been reduced to words that offend nobody.

there is danger here,and no good will come from it.no matter if the intent sounds just and the goal compassionate.

freedom of speech is the right to speak freely.
to espouse our opinions,philosophy and yes,our bigotry and prejudice,with legal immunity,but NOT social impunity.

so while we have a right to free speech.
we do not have a right to not be offended,and maybe we need to be offended sometimes.to shake us from our own self-induced apathy and our adoration of digital hallucinations.

so when the westboro baptist church says the most hateful,vitriolic and disgusting admonishments,all in the name of god.
we can be offended by them,and then ridicule them relentlessly.

would stripping words from the english language prevent this group from espousing their own brand of hate?

of course not.they would just find new words.

so what do we do then?
make words illegal?
criminally libel?

so don't judge mr fry too harshly.
he is just pointing to the dangers of controlling speech and the new trend of the perpetually offended.

the extreme right attempts to control morality,and there is serious danger in that practice.
the extreme left attempts to control how we communicate,and hence how we interact,and there is great danger in that as well.

So cute. Oh, and the koala is kind of adorable too.

I see he's been to the Hugh Laurie school of american accents, looks fun though. They've got to find some way to introduce him to Martin Freeman's Everett K. Ross, those two are adorable together.