Gnome Liberation Organization
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Post by Gnome Liberation Organization on Aug 5, 2003 11:37:51 GMT -5
Roseburg Oregon, get these guys a link for "Troll" and "Elf" streaming audio.
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Post by GLA on Aug 5, 2003 11:52:06 GMT -5
Gnome thefts vex Roseburg homeowners Oregon live ^ | 7/11/2003
Posted on 07/12/2003 3:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — Gnome owners beware.
A group calling themselves the "Gnome Liberation Organization" has been swiping the elfin lawn ornaments all over the Roseburg area.
Effie Hagedorn discovered her gnome was missing on Monday. A note from the "GLO" was left on her porch.
"We have received intelligence of an enslaved gnome at your place of residence," the note said. "Whether you have come across this gentle woodland creature through deliberate actions or innocent ignorance, we care not ... It is now in a better place."
Hagedorn said her gnome was a gift from a friend and was guarding her garden. The bearded gnome was about a foot tall and wearing a blue jacket and a red hat. He was holding a garden trowel.
"I just figured, whimsically ... that he was helping me in my garden," she said.
Hucrest resident Mary Bjelland believes her gnome was stolen by a group of teenagers recently seen cruising her neighborhood late at night. She had purchased her gnome just 10 days before it was stolen.
"If I had known that this was something going on I wouldn't have put a gnome out there, especially a new one," Bjelland said.
Gnome thieves are apparently not limited to Roseburg. An Internet search turns up a host of sites devoted to freeing the porcelain creatures.
The GLO note left at Bjelland's home read: "We hope that you will aid us in our quest to dispel the common myth that gnomes are simply inanimate yard decorations."
It doesn't matter that the thefts are a lighthearted prank, said Roseburg Police Sgt. Mark Nickel.
"Kids do silly things," said Roseburg Police Department Sgt. Mark Nickel. But "if it's a theft, we treat it as a theft, funny or not."
However, Nickel said, in these cases "usually their intent is not to permanently deprive the person" of the gnome, in which case a charge of criminal mischief is more likely. ****************************************8
Garden gnomes gather in sinister French plot
Culture/Society News Source: Independent Online Published: July 11, 2001 Posted on 07/12/2001 14:51:25 PDT by sarcasm Strasbourg - More than 100 garden gnomes and other gaudy statues were discovered on Wednesday assembled on a traffic circle in eastern France.
Some of the statues were set up to spell out "Free the Gnomes".
No one claimed immediate responsibility for the stunt, but police said it bore all the hallmarks of the shadowy Garden Gnome Liberation Front.
The kitsch little creatures were reported stolen from numerous gardens around the town of Chavelot overnight and subsequently gathered together on the traffic circle.
"It was a bit like a giant creche. Everything had been carefully set up," said a police spokesperson.
The Gnome Liberation Front rose to prominence in the mid-1990s following a series of raids on gardens to "free" gnomes and "return them to the wild".
The group suffered a setback in 1997 when a court handed its ringleader a suspended prison sentence and fined him for his part in the disappearance of about 150 gnomes.
After briefly going to ground, the Front hit the headlines again in 1998 when it staged a mass "suicide" of gnomes in eastern France. Last year, the group struck Paris, stealing aboud 20 gnomes during a night raid on a Paris garden exhibition.
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Post by jazzhead on Aug 7, 2003 16:59:02 GMT -5
For AAJ/Jazz Excursion radio play consideration, please forward all press material (CD and one-sheet) to:
John Sutton AAJ-Jazz Excursion 12498 North Antelope Trail Parker, CO 80138
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Post by degicank on Aug 27, 2003 13:26:16 GMT -5
www.deathclock.com/Attempts to trick death One of mankind's most persistent dreams is to postpone death. Folktales describe many such attempts, cloaked in a variety of symbolic garbs. They rarely succeed, not even in the fantasy world of the magic tale. The widespread story of "Godfather Death," retold below in a Swedish version, is typical: A poor man with a large family could find no one to be godfather for his latest son. Finally Death appeared, and the poor man chose him, saying: "You make no distinction between high and low." Years later, on the godson's wedding night, Death called him from his bed and took him to a cave where countless candles were burning. "Whose light is that?" asked the godson, pointing to a candle that was flickering out. "Your own," answered the godfather. The godson pleaded with Death to put a new candle in his holder, but the godfather did not answer. The light flickered and went out and the godson fell down dead. We find from this that you can neither persuade nor cheat Death.
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Post by degicank on Sept 18, 2003 10:17:19 GMT -5
A Sign from God Germany In Magdeburg they formerly showed (I do not know if they still do) with a plaque depicting a horse that was looking out the window of a house's upper story. The following legend explains this plaque:
A man buried his wife with the pomp expected of his class, leaving on her finger a valuable diamond ring. The greedy gravedigger noticed this, and therefore returned that night to open the grave, pry up the coffin lid, and attempt to remove the ring from the dead woman. However, the ring was tight, and he had to push and twist and turn, which revived the woman, who was only in a trance. She sat up, giving the disloyal gravedigger such a fright that he fell down unconscious.
The woman, herself frightened by her helpless condition, picked up the gravedigger's lantern and staggered toward her husband's house.
She knocked.
The servant asked, "Who is there?"
"It's me," she answered, "the lady of the house. Open the door for me."
Deathly pale, he ran to his master's room and told him the news.
"My wife will never return from her grave," he answered, "any more than would my horses walk up the steps in order to look out the window."
Then he heard clip clop up the steps. It was his horses. Then the man believed, went downstairs, opened the door, and received his wife, who he thought was dead. And he lived happily with her for many long years.
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Post by degicank on Sept 18, 2003 10:23:31 GMT -5
The Woodcutter and Death
A Tale from Nepal
Retold by Alida Gersie
Once there lived an old woodcutter. He was very poor and could scarcely make ends meet. One day he went into the forest and gathered a lot more wood than usual. As he bent down to lift the bundle onto his shoulders he found that he was too frail to raise the heavy weight. He sighed deeply and cursing his age, said: "If only I were dead." Suddenly someone stood next to him. A strange voice asked: "Did you call me?" The woodcutter felt a great fear. "No, no I didn't", he lied.
Ignoring the old man's clumsy deception Death made himself known. He explained that he had simply come, because he had been called. The woodcutter became less frightened and looked at Death. He found it very hard to believe that this was really Death himself. Seeing his doubt, Death pointed at an old woman who bathed in a nearby pond. The woman suddenly fell and died. This immediately brought the woodcutter to his senses. He at once remembered why he had wanted to die, and asked Death, now that he was here, if he could please give him a hand and lift the bundle of wood onto his shoulders. Death gladly obliged. The woodcutter was ready to hurry home, when the thought came to him that he might ask how much longer he had to live. As he left, Death answered: "Five years to a day."
That night the woodcutter did not sleep very well. Tumultuous thoughts haunted him. Early the next morning he returned to the forest. He looked for a big, big tree. And when he found it, he cut a single hole in the bottom of the tree. Then he started carving out the inside of the trunk. He carved for five whole years.
Then Death returned. Just as he said he would. The old woodcutter promised to come along, but, he said, before he was ready to leave the world, he so much wanted Death to see what he had carved as a gift for the people who would live long after he had died. They went to the woods. Deep into the woods they went. Death climbed into the tree-trunk. Proudly the woodcutter showed him round. When Death was in the top of the tree-trunk house, the woodcutter hastened down, crept outside, jammed a log into the entrance hole and hurried home.
Time passed. People and animals gave birth, but Death came to no one. Hunger and illness resided everywhere, yet nobody died. Even the gods became alarmed. They approached the Lord Shiva, the great one, who, donning the garb of a human being, decided to come to earth. He went immediately to the old woodcutter and asked him if he still wanted to go on living.
The poor woodcutter was by now even older and weaker, and so ill that he could hardly leave his resting- place, let alone return to the forest where Death was locked inside the tree- house. Quietly the old woodcutter acknowledge that, at last, he was ready to die. Then the Lord Shiva helped the old man to get up. Slowly they walked to the forest. They went deep into the woods. Then he opened the tree and released Death. Death was shaken by his ordeal in the tree. He pleaded with the Lord Shiva to make him from now on invisible, so that people could no longer devise ways to stave him off. "So be it", Lord Shiva said.
From that day onwards Death has been invisible to humankind, though he sees all of us. And the woodcutter, he died.
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Post by degicank on Sept 18, 2003 10:31:39 GMT -5
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177 Death's Messengers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm In ancient times a giant was wandering along the highway when suddenly a stranger jumped toward him and shouted, "Stop! Not one step further!" "What?" said the giant. "You, a creature that I could crush between my fingers, you want to block my way? Who are you that you dare to speak so boldly?"
"I am Death," answered the other one. "No one resists me, and you too must obey my orders."
But the giant refused, and began to wrestle with Death. It was a long, violent battle, and finally the giant got the upper hand, and knocked Death down with his fist, causing him to collapse by a stone. The giant went on his way, and Death lay there conquered, so weak that he could not get up again.
"What is to come of this?" he said. "If I stay lying here in a corner, no one will die in the world, and it will become so filled with people that they won't have room to stand beside one another."
Meanwhile a young man came down the road. Vigorous and healthy, he was singing a song and looking this way and that. Seeing the half-conscious individual, he approached him with compassion, raised him up, gave him a refreshing drink from his flask, and waited until he regained his strength.
"Do you know," asked the stranger, as he stood up, "who I am, and whom you have helped onto his legs again?"
"No," answered the youth, "I do not know you."
"I am Death," he said. "I spare no one, nor can make an exception with you. However, so you may see that I am grateful, I promise you that I will not attack you without warning, but instead will send my messengers to you before I come and take you away."
"Good," said the youth. "It is to my benefit that I shall know when you are coming, and that I will be safe from you until then."
Then he went on his way, and was cheerful and carefree, and lived one day at a time. However, youth and good health did not last long. Soon came sickness and pain, which tormented him by day and deprived him of his rest by night.
"I shall not die," he said to himself, "for Death will first send his messengers, but I do wish that these wicked days of sickness were over."
Regaining his health, he began once more to live cheerfully. Then one day someone tapped on his shoulder.
He looked around, and death was standing behind him, who said, "Follow me. The hour of your departure from this world has come."
"What?" replied the man. "Are you breaking your word? Did you not promise me that you would send your messengers to me before you yourself would come? I have not seen a one of them."
"Be still!" answered Death. "Have I not sent you one messenger after another? Did not fever come and strike you, and shake you, and throw you down? Has not dizziness numbed your head? Has not gout pinched your limbs? Did your ears not buzz? Did toothache not bite into your cheeks? Did your eyes not darken? And furthermore, has not my own brother Sleep reminded you every night of me? During the night did you not lie there as if you were already dead?"
The man did not know how to answer, so he surrendered to his fate and went away with Death.
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Post by degicank on Sept 18, 2003 10:38:32 GMT -5
Death and the Moon
An old man was walking on the road in the clear light of the moon and saw the body of a dead man lying at the edge of the road. He gathered a number of animals around him and challenged them: "Which of you is brave enough to carry both the dead man and the moon to the other side of the river?" Two turtles said they would do it. The first one, who had very big claws, took the moon, and arrived safely at the opposite bank; the other, who had only small claws, seized the dead man, but drowned in the river. That is why the moon, after dying, reappears every night, but a dead man never returns.
-Senegal
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