Woof you can keep your head when all about you...

Over at JSBlog, Ray Girvan mentions Kipling's If– and its many parodies. I was going to put the version below in a comment to the post ... but as it came to me from Matt Revell, and as I am overdue on writing a response here to a thought provoking emailed comment from Matt on "Lucy in the sky with violence", and since I suspect that it will appeal to Julie Heywood who has so often waited in vain for my responses, I thought I'd make it a separate post instead ... this is what we call "killing three turnips with one stone" (you may have heard a carnivorous parody, involving violence to feathered friends).

It apparently originated as one of those endlessly forwarded emails, but it reached me (several years ago) as a postcard from Matt which has been on the fridge door ever since. Here we go:

If you can always be cheerful
If you can sleep without drugs
If you can relax without alcohol
If you can start the day without caffeine
If you can take the blame without resentment
If you can resist complaining
If you can east the same food everyday and be grateful for it
If you can understand it if your loved ones are too busy to give you time
And if you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong
Then my friend you are almost as good as your dog.

I, of course, don't believe in keeping pets on principle...