WORDS OF WISDOM ?

Some say that the worst vice is "advice" ....... but there are exceptions to every rule . Wear Sunscreen or the Sunscreen Speech are the common names of an essay titled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. Both its subject and tone are similar to the 1927 poem "Desiderata" (Latin for "desired things", plural of desideratum) a prose poem by Max Ehrmann about attaining happiness in life.
The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), released in 1998, by Baz Luhrmann.

And like any great work , there's always some joker out there who thinks its oh so funny to make fun of it ....... and of course it is .... if its done right .

"Deteriorata" is a famous parody of San Francisco radio and television personality Les Crane's spoken word recording of Desiderata. It was written by Tony Hendra and recorded by National Lampoon as part of their National Lampoon Radio Dinner album of 1972.



Then of course there's " IF " by Rudyard Kipling (Rudy the Kip), for those of you who like Kipling or even those who've never even tried to Kipple ..... here it is :

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

By the way .... he did not make exceedingly good cakes .