Excuse me, these yams have no honor. --A Klingon at Safeway, from Trekies ** Added 20050509 ** % Thomas Crown: May I ask you a rather personal question...... Would you... like another hit of espresso? Would you? Catherine Banning: That was your personal question? --From The Thomas Crown Affair (remake) ** Added 20050508 ** % I've got phone sex To see me through the emptyness In my 501's --Underworld from "Dirty Epic" ** Added 20050209 ** % I'll make you all feel special...one after another...just give me money. --A stripper from GTA San Andreas ** Added 20050125 ** % Don't tease me about my hobbies; I don't tease you about being an asshole. --Mark from "Garden State" ** Added 20050122 ** % Shepard Book: People like a man of god. Malcom Reynolds: No, they don't. Men of god make people feel guilty and judged. --From "Firefly" ** Added 20041208 ** % "I shall see you, Daniel, on Parnassus, or wherever it is that Philosophers end up!" "I think they end up in old books," said Daniel, "and so I shall look for you, sir, in a Library." --Leibniz and Daniel Waterhouse saying goodbye for the last time from "The System Of The World" by Neal Stephenson ** Added 20041127 ** % We spoke of Mr. Hooke's observations on snowflakes--their remarkable property, which is that each of the six arms grows outwards from a common center, and each grows independently, of its own internal rules. One arm cannot affect the others. And yet the arms are all alike. To me this is is an embodiment of the pre-established harmony. Now, Daniel, in like manner, there grows out of the core of Natural Philosophy more than one system for understanding the Universe. They grow according to their own internal principles, and one does not affect another--as Newton and I demonstrated yesterday by utterly failing to agree on anything! But if it's true--as I believe--that they are rooted in a common seed, then in the fullness of time they must adopt a like form, and become reflections of one another, as a snowflake's arms. --Leibniz to Daniel Waterhouse from "The System Of The World" by Neal Stephenson ** Added 20041127 ** % "A toast" Susan said as soon as the waiter left. She lifted her champagne flute and then waited for us to follow suit. "Paul, would you do the honors?" "I don't know what to say," I confessed, my face heating. A couple of corny things ran through my mind, but I eventually settled on something sappy. "To good friends," I said. Then I had an impish thought. "To good friends," I repeated, "and to beautiful women. One or the other is nice, but the luckiest men have both." --From "Summer Camp, Book 3" by Nick Scipio (www.nickscipio.com) ** Added 20040828 ** % Tycho: I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with WHEAT. Kara: Isn't that just...bread? --From Penny-Arcade (www.penny-arcade.com) ** Added 20040809 ** % "Where," she asked skeptically, "did you learn to kiss like that?" "That's the way I kiss." "No, Speedy, nobody kisses like that. I bet you picked that up from the movies. You kissed me the way somebody like William Holden kisses." "That," I insisted, "is the way I kiss." "No. That's the way William Holden kisses." "He got it from me." "Oh...I see. Well, that's some kiss." --Speedy and Martha Jane from "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" by Santos J. Romeo ** Added 20040803 ** % Miho: I wasn't aware the Tokyo Police employed uneducated, paranoid, delusional foreign delinquents. Largo: In my case, they made an exception. --from "megatokyo" at www.megatokyo.com ** Added 20040730 ** % Greg: As I figure it, the comic would be 39.4% funnier with the addition of a monkey. Tony: Really. Greg: And that's just for the first monkey. Each additional monkey adds another 3%, with no upper limit. Tony: So what are you getting at? Greg: We need to find a monkey wholesaler. --from RealLife at www.reallifecomics.com ** Added 20040729 ** % Grab your bizarro twin and beat the living hell out of them! --Roy from "Order of the Stick" at http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript ** Added 20040729 ** % Oh...it's both of you! Wow.. I've never been in a threesome before. I'll go get my wallet. --Xerox Guy to Wendy and Other Girl from "CuteWendy" at http://go-girly.com ** Added 20040726 ** % It's kind of an extreme sports meets freaky demon bitches with their tits out. You can do a lip trick off a giant human skull into a burning vagina. --Gabe,describing a video game he is designing (from www.penny-arcade.com) ** Added 20030507 ** % A massive power surge has disabled all of the stations critical functions. --Men-Tel computer error message from "Fortress 2" ** Added 20040326 ** % "They cannot see the string at this distance," Jack commented, "and suppose you are doing some sort of magick." "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo," Enoch said. --From Neal Stephenson's "The Confusion" ** Added 20040422 ** % ...and saw a limp mottled brown thing a few centimeters on a side, fuzzy around the edges, resting on Harv's crossed ankles. "What is it?" "It's magic. Watch this, " Harv said. And worrying at it with his toothpick, he teased something loose. "It's got a string coming out of it!" Nell said. "Sssh!" Harv gripped the end of the thread beneath his thumbnail and pulled. It looked quite short, but it lengthened as he pulled, and the fuzzy edge of the piece of fabric waffled too fast to see, and then the thread had come loose entirely. He held it up for inspection, then let it drift down onto a heap of others just like it. "How many does it have?" Nell said. "Nell," Harv said, turning to face her so that his light shone on her face, his voice coming out of the light epiphanically, "You got it wrong. It's not that the thing has threads IN it--it IS threads. Threads going under and over each other. If you pulled out all of the threads, nothing would be left." "Did mites make it?" Nell asked. "The way it's made--so digital--each thread going over and under other threads, and those ones going over and under all the other threads--" Harv stopped for a moment, his mind overloaded by the inhuman audacity of the thing, the promiscuous reference frames. "It had to be mites, Nell, nothing else could do it." --From Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" ** Added 20040302 ** % If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings. --From Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", describing "McWhorter's Original Condiment". ** Added 20040302 ** % ...Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations--whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes--without feeling a thing or, at least without letting on. --From Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" ** Added 20040302 ** % Your boyfriend is really a jerk. Will he ever learn to play the saxophone. --From "Through the Wall" by The Bobs, 1983 ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I'm holding my urine in a cup because I have responsibilities. --Space Ghost on Space Ghost Coast To Coast ** Added 20040209 ** % You won't regret this for quite some time. --Hollywood Actor Beck Bristo on Sealab 2021 ** Added 20040209 ** % Who'd have ever thought I'd actually be angry at my right hand. We're usually such good friends. --Neal, from www.americananimetion.com ** Added 20040217 ** % A recent survey of hamsters reveals that contrary to past research, humping things is more popular than eating, which came in a very close second, followed by smelling things and pooping. --A hamster newscaster, from www.shaw-island.com ** Added 20040131 ** % There are days when I can't configure my own damn hair or operate my pants. I'll leave the computer alone thank you very much. --Ben, from www.shaw-island.com ** Added 20040130 ** % You're fighting a Spectral Jellyfish This is the enslaved spirit of a jellyfish that didn't quite make it to Jellyfish Heaven (where jellyfish go, to get away from Mormons and drunk Eskimos.) --From Cobb's Knob Menagerie, Level 3 at www.kingdomofloathing.com ** Added 20040129 ** % [The carriage] stopped in the great house's forecourt. Daniel admired its situation: John Comstock could, if he so chose, plant himself in the center of his front doorway and fire a musket across his garden, out his front gate, across Piccadilly, straight down the center of a tree-lined faux-country lane, across Pall Mall, and straight into the grand entrance of St. James's, where it would be likely to kill someone very well-dressed. --From Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver" ** Added 20031208 ** % Some say that crying is childish. Daniel--who since the birth of Godfrey [his son] has had more opportunities than he should have liked to observe crying--takes a contrary view. Crying LOUDLY is childish, in that it reflects a belief, on the crier's part, that someone is around to hear the noise, and come a-running to make it all better. Crying in absolute silence as Daniel does this morning, is the mark of the mature sufferer who no longer nurses, nor is nursed by, any such comfortable delusions. --From Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver" ** Added 20031208 ** % I guess I'm just not used to being chased around the mall in the middle of the night by killer robots. --Linda, from the movie 'Chopping Mall' ** Added 20030926 ** % Woman: Knock Knock! Man: Who's there? Woman: Neoimperialism. Man: Neoimperialism who? Woman: I just wanted to see if you could pronounce it. --From "Get Your War On" http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war25.html ** Added 20030728 ** % Breakin' the chains you better cut me some. Heart of a lion and the wings of a bat (becuz it's midnight)! Heart of a lion and the wings of a bat (becuz it's midnight)! Sunset Strip, California, West Hollywood.... --Limozeen, from www.homestarrunner.com ** Added 20030728 ** % Oscar found travel difficult. Traffic in Alabama was snarled by manic Christian tent-revival shows, "breathing fresh life into the spirit" with two-hundred-beat-per-minute gospel raves. --From "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling (which takes place in 2044) ** Added 20030711 ** % Knowledge is inherently precious even if you can't sell it. Even if you can't use it. Knowledge is an absolute good. The search for truth is vital. It's central to civilization. You need knowledge even if your economy and government are absolutely shot to hell. --Dr. Gretta Penninger in "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling ** Added 20030711 ** % In times of old when I was new And Hogwarts barely started The founders of our noble school Thought never to be parted: United by a common goal, They had the selfsame yearning To make the world's best magic school And pass along their learning. "Together we will build and teach!" The four good friends decided And never did they dream that they Might someday be divided, For were there such friends anywhere As Slytherin and Gryffindor? Unless it was the second pair Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? So how could it have gone so wrong? How could such friendships fail? Why, I was there and so can tell The whole sad, sorry tale. Said Slytherin, "We'll teach just those Whose ancestry is purest." Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose Intelligence is surest." Said Gryffindor, "We'll teach all those With brave deeds to their name." Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot, And treat them just the same." These differences caused little strife When first they came to light, For each of the four founders had A House in which they might Take only those they wanted, so, For instance, Slytherin Took only pure-blood wizards Of great cunning, just like him, And only those of sharpest mind Were taught by Ravenclaw While the bravest and the boldest Went to Gryffindor. Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest, And taught them all she knew, Thus the Houses and their founders Retained friendships firm and true. So Hogwarts worked in harmony For several happy years, But then discord crept among us Feeding on our faults and fears. The Houses that, like pillars four, Had once held up our school, Now turned upon each other and, Divided, sought to rule. And for a while it seemed the school Must meet an early end, What with dueling and with fighting And the clash of friend on friend And at last there came a morning When old Slytherin departed And though the fighting then died out He left us quite downhearted. And never since the founders four Were whittled down to three Have the Houses been united As they once were meant to be. And now the Sorting Hat is here And you all know the score: I sort you into Houses Because that is what I'm for, But this year I'll go further, Listen closely to my song: Though condemned I am to split you Still I worry that it's wrong, Though I must fulfill my duty And must quarter every year Still I wonder whether sorting May bring the end I fear. Oh, know the perils, read the signs, The warning history shows, For our Hogwarts is in danger From external, deadly foes And we must unite inside her Or we'll crumble from within I have told you, I have warned you.... Let the Sorting now begin. --The Sorting Hat's Song, from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J. K. Rowling ** Added 20030630 ** % First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and the end of the end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss? -- The Sphinx's riddle, from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by J. K. Rowling ** Added 20030705 ** % A thousand years or more ago, When I was newly sewn, There lived four wizards of renown, Whose names are still well known: Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor, Fair Ravenclaw, from glen, Sweet Hufflepuff, from Valley broad, Shrewd Slytherin, from fen. They shared a wish, a hope, a dream, They hatched a daring plan To educate young sorcerers Thus Hogwarts School began. Now each of these four founders Formed their own house, for each Did value different virtues In the ones they had to teach. By Gryffindor, the bravest were Prized far beyond the rest; For Ravenclaw, the cleverest Would always be the best; For Hufflepuff, hard workers were Most worthy of admission; And power-hungry Slytherin Loved those of great ambition. While still alive they did divide Their favorites from the throng, Yet how to pick the worthy ones When they were dead and gone? 'Twas Gryffindor who found the way, He whipped me off his head The founders put some brains in me So I could choose instead! now slip me snug about your ears, I've never yet been wrong, I'll have a look inside your mind And tell where you belong! --The Sorting Hat's Song, from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by J. K. Rowling ** Added 20030705 ** % Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where it keeps its brain. --Mr. Arthur Weasley, from at least 2 of the 5 (so far) Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling ** Added 20030705 ** % This isn't really a quote, but: -Based on the fact that October 31st 1492 was the deathday of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (Nearly-Headless Nick, the Gryffindor House ghost), -and his 500th deathday party happens during Harry's 2nd year at Hogwarts, -and Harry turned 12 during the previous July =>Harry Potter was born in 1981, =>The Potter family was murdered by Voldemort and Voldemort fell from power in 1982 Another confirming date: In a letter Harry writes to Sirius in August of 1995 (assuming above date information), he says Dudley "chucked his PlayStation out of the window." The Sony PlayStation became available to the public in 1995. Since it was new, Dudley would have to have it and also break it shortly after getting it. --Based on information gleaned from all five (so far) of the "Harry Potter" books by J. K. Rowling ** Revised 20030728 ** % Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you! --Professor Albus Dumbledore, from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J. k. Rowling ** Added 20030701 ** % Oh, you may not think I'm pretty, But don't judge on what you see, I'll eat myself if you can find A smarter hat than me. You can keep your bowlers black, Your top hats sleek and tall, For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat And I can cap them all. There's nothing hidden in your head The Sorting Hat can't see, So try me on and I will tell you Where you ought to be. You might belong to Gryffindor, Where dwell the brave at heart, Their daring, nerve, and chivalry Set Gryffindors apart; You might belong in Hufflepuff, Where they are just and loyal, Those patient Hufflepuffs are true And unafraid of toil; Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, If you've a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind; Or perhaps in Slytherin You'll make your real friends, Those cunning folk use any means To achieve their ends. So put me on! Don't be afraid! And don't get in a flap! You're in safe hands (though I have none) For I'm a Thinking Cap! --The Sorting Hat's Song, from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J. K. Rowling ** Added 20030701 ** % The gold ones are Galleons. Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. --Hagrid, explaining Wizarding money, from "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone" by J. K. Rowling. Note: This sounds more complicated than British money. ** Added 20030701 ** % Breathing shallow, I'm slipping away. Hanging in the gallows, I'm starting to pray. How careful it was planned to do away with me; So kill me if you can, But words won't make be bleed. So what if I survive, And live to tell the truth? Imagine my surprise, To find me living and so very much alive! I'll find a new life and hide, If I survive. But I swear you're going down if I survive! I'll find a new life and hide if I survive. I'll find my own place in time if I survive. I'll learn to forget the crime if I survive... But I swear you're going down if I survive! If I survive I'll tell on you. I'll find a new life and hide if I survive. I'll find my own place in time if I survive. I'll learn to forget the crime if I survive... But I swear you're going down if I survive! --"If I survive" by Hybrid ** Added 20030627 ** % Ugh, I HATE finding cluster bombs in my cake! They get stuck in my fillings. --From "Get Your War On!" http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war23.html ** Added 20030421 ** % When the routine bites hard and ambitions are low And the resentment rides high but emotions won't grow And we're changing our ways, taking different roads Then love, love will tear us apart again love, love will tear us apart again Why is the bedroom so cold Turned away on your side? Is my timing that flawed, our respect run so dry? Yet there's still this appeal That we've kept through our lives Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again Do you cry out in your sleep All my failings expose? Get a taste in my mouth As desperation takes hold Is it something so good Just can't function no more? When love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again --"Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division ** Added 20030402 ** % I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not! --A mortal speaking to god, from Raymond M. Smullyan's "The Tao Is Silent. ** Added 20030321 ** % People laugh at me for keeping my money in a big tin bucket. Well you know what? A big tin bucket is not gonna fucking lie to me about its financial performance! --From 'Get Your War On' http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/ ** Added 20030305 ** % I will behead anyone who sees Jesus in a tortilla. --Adam Carolla, as King of the World on 'The Man Show' ** Added 20030217 ** % Real life doesn't fit into little boxes that were drawn for it. --Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), from 'Unbreakable' ** Added 20030217 ** % Some said that turnabout was fair play, but she had never believed in fighting fair. Either you fought, or you did not, and it was never a game. Fairness was for people standing safely to one side, talking while others bled. --Cadsuane, thinking to herself, from Robert Jordan's "Crossroads of Twilight; Book Ten of The Wheel Of Time" ** Added 20030207 ** % There were six of them, ... six men in black coats. Two with silver swords on their collars were feeling men out about whether they might like to learn to channel. Oh, they did not say so right out. Wield the lightnings, they called it. Wield the lightnings and ride the thunder. But it was clear enough to me, if not to the fools they were talking to. --An Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah from Robert Jordan's "Crossroads of Twilight; Book Ten of The Wheel Of Time" ** Added 20030207 ** % As you yourself, superior to all Flatland forms, combine many Circles in One, so doubtless there is One above you who combines many Spheres in One Supreme Existence, surpassing even the Solids of Spaceland. And even as we, who are now in Space, look down on Flatland and see the insides of all things, so of a certainty there is yet above us some higher, purer region, wither thou dost surely purpose to lead me--O Thou Whom I shall always call, everywhere an in all Dimensions, my Priest, Philosopher, and Friend--some yet more spacious Space, some more dimensionable Dimensionality, from the vantage-ground of which we shall look down together upon the revealed insides of Solid things, and where thine own intestines, and those of thy kindred Spheres, will lie exposed to the view of the poor wandering exile from Flatland, to whom so much has already been vouchsafed. --From Edwin A. Abbott's "Flatland" (the only Victorian novel I have read which did not bore me to death). ** Added 20030207 ** % Like I always say 'When life gives you lemons ... blow the crap out of them with your laser cannons!' --Brak, from "The Brak Show" ** Added 20030120 ** % " And the dragon comes in the NIIIiiiiIIIiiiiIIIIIIIIiiiiiii iiiiIIIIIIIIiiiIIGGHH --http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail36.html ** Added 20030105 ** % Nothing was more reassuring to me than the knowledge that I would die. In these moments of clarity--and you see yourself clearly only when you see yourself as a stranger--all despair, all gaiety, all depression vanish and are replaced with calm. For me death was not something scary or a state of being or an event that would happen to me. It was a focusing on the now, an aid, an ally in the effort to be mentally present. --Smilla, from Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % To keep my spirits up I ask myself: What is a human being? Who am I? Am I my name? --Smilla, from Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % He has given me the correct size. As much as work clothes can ever be the right size. I try putting a belt around the smock. Now I no longer look like a mailbag. Now I look like an hourglass five feet two inches tall. --Smilla, from Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % We stand with our backs to the bar. A tall, frosted glass is covered with a thin layer of ice, which now melts and starts to slide off. It's full of a clear, amber-colored liquid. "Bullshot, honey. Eight parts vodka, eight parts beef bouillon." --Lander, from Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % There are mornings when it feels as if you rise up to the surface through a mud bath. With your feet stuck in a block of cement. When you know that you've expired in the night and have nothing to be happy about except the fact that at least you've already died so they can't transplant your lifeless organs. Six out of seven mornings are like that. --From Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % They say that people drink a lot in Greenland. That is a totally absurd understatement. People drink a colossal amount. --From Peter Høeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow" Note: the "ø" in "Høeg" should be an "o" with a line through it, it being some weird Danish character that I don't know how to pronounce, it may not display properly. ** Added 20021220 ** % Tell us, they'll say to me. So we will understand and be able to resolve things. They'll be mistaken. It's only the things you don't understand that you can resolve. There will be no resolution. --The last paragraph of a cool mystery/suspense novel I just finished reading. It has just become clear which side will win the last "fight" in the book, though the "fight" is not totally over. Our characters are all very far from civilization and it may be hard for them to make it back alive, whenever the conflict ends. This is one of the best endings I have ever read. ** Added 20021221 ** % 1. Find out who profits from it. 2. Groups never meet together except to conspire against other groups. 3. Every system evolves and expands until it encroaches upon other systems. 4. It all returns to equilibrium, eventually. --Summary of the entire science of economics from "The Homing Pigeons" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021205 ** % He ... told them the old story of how Picasso, asked to identify the real Picassos in a group of possible fakes, had put one of his own canvases among the fraudulent group. "But," an art dealer among those present protested, "I saw you paint that one myself, Pablo." "No matter," said the Great Man imperturbably, "I can fake a Picasso as well as anybody." --From "The Homing Pigeons" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021206 ** % "The Federal Reserve System--a private bank responsible to nobody, despite its name--creates money out of nothing," [Dr. Horace] Naismith began in a pleasant Texas twang. "There is no one money system that was ordained by God. They were all invented by human beings and can be improved by human beings. "Now, what is money? Money is information. Ask any computer programmer about that, if you don't believe it. Money is a signal, a unit of pure information. It is as abstract as mathematics. Cattle served as money once. So did leather. So did precious metals. They were commodity monies, because they were worth something in themselves. Modern paper money is pure information, worth absolutely zilch, except for the signals printed on it. "Money in the modern world," Naismith went on, "is no more than a promise to pay. If you look at the bills in your wallet right now, you'll see what they're promising to pay. They're promising to pay you more paper. They don't have to give you a gram of gold or silver or any real commodity. They'll give you more paper if you want to trade in the paper you already have. Didn't that ever strike you as a little bit funny? "Think about it this way," Naismith said, warming to his subject. "This is a corny old Sufi parable, but it might help you to get the picture. "The great Sufi sage Nasrudin once invented a magic wand. Wishing to patent such a valuable devise, Nasrudin waved the wand and created a patent office, which immediately appeared in 3-D Technicolor. "Nasrudin then walked in and told the clerk, 'I want to patent a magic wand.' "'You can't do that,' said the clerk. 'There is no such thing as a magic wand.' "Nasrudin immediately waved his wand again, and the patent office and the clerk both disappeared." --From "The Homing Pigeons" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021205 ** % Let me control a planet's oxygen supply and I don't care who makes the laws. --From "The Trick Top Hat" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021205 ** % Society as we know it is based on torture and death, or the threat of torture and death. I am here to be tortured, although the authorities will never admit that.... But if everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled--by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know what I know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists. --From "The Trick Top Hat" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021205 ** % Bohr had added nearly as much to quantum theory as Planck, Einstein, or Schrodinger, and his model of the atom--the Bohr model, it's called--had been believed literally by a generation of physicians before Hiroshima. Bohr himself, however never believed it; nor had he believed any of his other theories. Bohr invented what is called the Copenhagen Interpretation, which holds in effect that a physicist shouldn't believe anything but his measurements in the laboratory. Everything else--the whole body of mathematics and theory relating one measurement to another--Bohr regarded as a model of how the human mind works, not of how the universe works. Blake Williams loved Bohr for the Copenhagen Interpretation, which had made it possible for him to study physics seriously, even devoutly, without believing a word of it. --From "The Trick Top Hat" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % ...posters and ... charts gaze down on the couch where Joe Malik and Carol Christmas are engaged in erotometaphysical epistemology. --From "The Trick Top Hat" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % That which is forbidden is not allowed. --From John Lilly's "The Center of the Cyclone" ** Added 20021201 ** % Judge Draconic V. Wasp pronounced sentence in this wise: "Young feller, you've been tried and convicted and every man in this courtroom knows your guilt is as black as hell. I have no regret in passing sentence in such a case. Soon, you little bastard, it will be spring and the robin will sing again, the flowers will bud, little children will laugh on their way to school--and you will hear and know nothing of that, for you will be dead, dead, dead. You chink bastard. Sheriff, take this yellow son-of-a-bitch out and hang him." Wing Lee Chee received this wrath with no show of emotion, but then he arose and addressed the court in a steady and terrible voice. "As I rook upon the whiskey-fogged faces of judge and july in the tlavesty of a civirized coult," he said, "I know furr werr that I was foorish to ever expect justice from such degenelates. You, Judge Wasp, speak of the sweet singing of lobins in the spling and the brooming of the prants, but what can you know of the gleat Tao that moves arr of us, you four-mouthed, cunt-ricking, donkey-fucking led-neck? You desclibe the gentre voices of chirden, you glafting, thieving, monkey-faced, frat-nosed idiot offspring of a feebre-minded goat by pulple-plicked baboon! What do you know of the innocence of rittle chirden? What do you know of anything but colluprion and highway lobbery, you syph-spocked, clap-lidden, amoeba-blained white lacist? You say that Wing Lee Chee sharr be hanged by the neck until he is dead, dead, dead, but Wing Lee Chee says"--he paused dramatically, swept the courtroom with a withering glance and concluded--"you can kiss my ass until it is led, led, led!" It is said that nineteen peace officers were torn limb from limb in the course of the hanging of Wing Lee Chee. --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson % The letter was sent out May 1, 1984, to the New York Times-News-Post, the Chicago Sun, the Los Angeles Times-Free Press, NBC News, CBS News, the White House, Mae Brussel, the Berkeley Barb, KPFA, ABC News, the London Times, Zodiac News Service, The Christian Science Monitor, the Archdioceses of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Louis, the Church of Scientology, Mark Lane, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bad Ass Bugle, the Nihilist Anarchist Horde, Norman Mailer, and 237 miscellaneous other institutions and celebrities. POE wanted to be sure that their message would get out to the general public with the minimum of distortion by the Establishment. The letter said: May God forgive us. May history judge us as charitably. We have placed tactical nuclear bombs in over 1,700 locations throughout the United States. The targets are all enemies of the people: large banks, multinational corporations, government facilities. We will trigger one of these bombs at noon tomorrow, somewhere in the eastern United States, to demonstrate that we are not bluffing. All of the other nuclear bombs will be triggered in succession until our demands are met. If any attempt is made to apprehend and arrest us--any attempt at all--all the remaining bombs will be detonated at once. We demand: That President Furbish Lousewart immediately confiscate all fortunes above one million dollars; That this money, which we calculate makes a sum of approximately three trillion dollars, be distributed at once to the forty million families, who are, according to the government's own standards, living below the poverty line, so that each family receives $75,000; That all government money presently invested in weapons of war and preparations for war be immediately redirected to improving schools, homes, and hospitals in poor neighborhoods, so as to make them fit for human beings; That George Washington be removed from the dollar bill and replaced by Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse to remind people forever of the idiocy of worshiping money. A final word of warning: We have been working on this project for sixteen years and have the full capacity to do all that we say. The Revolution of Lowered Expectations has been a monopolist's heaven and a poor people's hell. We intend to change that. President Lousewart, guided by Intelligence Agencies that had collectively listened to enough "private" conversations to be stone-paranoid, had acted within minutes after the POE letter arrived in the White House. The Unistat government would not be blackmailed. Even before TV could broadcast the story of the threat, over 10,000,000 "radicals" and possible "radicals" had been placed under arrest coast to coast. One of them, more or less accidentally, had been Sylvia Goldfarb of POE. All 1,700 POE bombs detonated at once. Unistat as an entity ceased to exist. Nihilist Anarchist Hordes roamed what was left of the landscape. Twenty-three hundred nuclear missiles, computer-guided to fire if Unistat were nuked, took off at the first blast and decimated Russia. The Beast had been programmed by Intelligence Agencies who were convinced that any nuclear attack would come from there. Twenty-three hundred Russian missiles took off the moment the first Unistat missile entered Russian airspace. They all went to China. The Russian computer had also been programmed by very dogmatic, very inflexible primates; it "knew" that any nuclear attack would come from China. --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % Take what thou hast and give it to the poor. --Attributed to some longhair commie freak --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021202 ** % Pornographic novels were novels about the things primates enjoy most, namely sexual acrobatics. They were taught to feel ashamed of these natural primate impulses so that they would be guilty-furtive-submissive types and easy for the alpha males to manipulate. Those caught reading such novels were called no-good shits, of course. --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % Justin Case suspected the FBI was tapping his phone. However, 9,000,000 out of 20,000,000 primates in New York also suspected the FBI of tapping their phones. Case just happened to be one of the 8,000,000 who were correct in this suspicion. --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % Since a great deal of primate behavior was considered just awful, most of the domesticated primates spent most of their time trying to conceal what they were doing. Some of the primates got caught by other primates. All of the primates lived in dread of getting caught. Those who got caught were called no-good shits. --From "The Universe Next Door" by Robert Anton Wilson ** Added 20021201 ** % Layer composite art limitless go!! --From Minipat (a SD anime about the making of the Patlabor series) ** Added 20021201 ** % If I went on ... I expected to be killed in a surgical operating room, all quiet and legal and proper. If you don't believe that such things can happen, we aren't living in the same world and there is no point in your reading any more of this memoir. --Friday, from Robert A. Heinlein's 'Friday' ** Added 20021114 ** % There is no true equity of power. There is only more and less. --Dega Disciple (a Magic Card) ** Added 20021105 ** % You're Greek and I'm Armenian. Of course we need to raise our children to speak Portuguese. --From Orson Scott Card's "Shadow Puppets" ** Added 20021031 ** % If these were his last hours of freedom, or even of life, why not spend them with people he liked, eating food he enjoyed? --From Orson Scott Card's "Shadow Puppets" ** Added 20021031 ** % Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport. --From Orson Scott Card's "Shadow Puppets" ** Added 20021031 ** % He held her again. An elderly couple passed by. The man looked disapproving, as if he thought these foolish young people should find a more private place for their kissing and hugging. But the old woman, her white hair held severely by a head scarf, gave him a wink, as if to say, Good for you, young fellow, young girls should be kissed thoroughly and often. --From Orson Scott Card's "Shadow Puppets" ** Added 20021031 ** % Petra: If we separate, and Achilles finds me and kills me first, then you'll just have one more female you love deeply who is dead because you didn't protect her. Bean: You fight dirty. Petra: I fight like a girl. --From Orson Scott Card's "Shadow Puppets" ** Added 20021031 ** % He shifts position on the bed and his crucifix swings back and forth ponderously. He also has a medallion around his neck with something startling written on it. "Do you have some occult symbol there?" Randy asks, squinting. "I beg your pardon?" "I can make out the word 'occult' on your medallion there." "It says 'ignoti et quasi occulti', which means 'unknown and partly hidden' or words to that effect," says Enoch Root. "It is the motto of a society to which I belong. You must know that the word 'occult' does not intrinsically have anything to do with Satanic rituals and drinking blood and all of that. It--" "I was trained as an astronomer," Randy says. "So I learned all about occultation--the concealment of one body behind another, as during an eclipse." "Oh. Well, then, I'll shut up." "In fact, I know more than you might think about occultation," Randy says. It might seem like he's beating a dead horse, except that he catches the eye of Enoch Root while he's saying it, and gives a significant sidelong glance at his computer. Root processes this for a moment and then nods. "Who's the lady in the middle? The Virgin Mary?" Randy asks. Root fingers the medallion without looking at it, and says, "Reasonable guess. But wrong. It's Athena." "The Greek goddess?" "Yes." "How do you square that with Christianity?" "When I phoned you the other day, how did you know it was me?" "I don't know. I just recognized you." "Recognized me? What does that mean? You didn't recognize my voice." "Is this some roundabout way of answering my question about Athena worship v. Christianity?" "Doesn't it strike you as remarkable that you can look at a stream of characters on the screen of your computer--e-mail from someone you've never seen--and later 'recognize' the same person on the phone? How does that work, Randy?" "I haven't the faintest idea. The brain can do some weird--" "Some complain that e-mail is impersonal--that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that's not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately." "So what's your explanation of how I recognized you?" "I would argue that inside your mind was some pattern of neurological activity that was not there before you exchanged e-mail with me. The Root Representation. It is not me. I'm this big slug of carbon and oxygen and some other stuff on this cot right next to you. The Root Rep, by contrast, is the thing that you'll carry around in your brain for the rest of your life, barring some kind of major neurological insult, that your mind uses to represent me. When you think about me, in other words, you're not thinking about me qua this big slug of carbon, you are thinking about the Root Rep. Indeed, some day you might get released from jail and run into someone who would say, 'You know, I was in the Philippines once, running around in the boondocks, and I ran into this old fart who started talking to me about Root Reps.' And by exchanging notes (as it were) with this fellow you would be able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the Root Rep in your brain and the Root Rep in his brain were generated by the same actual slug of carbon and oxygen and so on: me." "And this has something to do, again, with Athena?" "If you think of the Greek gods as real supernatural beings who lived, on Mount Olympus, no. But if you think of them as being in the same class of entities as the Root Rep, which is to say, patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world, then yes. Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people. Why? Because, in the same way as you might one day encounter another person with his own Root Rep so, if you were to have a conversation with an ancient Greek person, and he started talking about Zeus, you might--once you got over your initial feelings of superiority--discover that you had some mental representations inside your own mind that, though you didn't name them Zeus and didn't think of them as a big hairy thunderbolt- hurling son of a Titan, nonetheless had been generated as a result of interactions with entities in the outside world that are the same as the ones that cause the Zeus Representation to appear in the Greek's mind. And here we could talk about the Plato's Cave thing for a while--the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors--it slices! it dices!" "In which," Randy says, "the actual entities in the real world are the three-dimensional, real things that are casting the shadows, this Greek dude and I are the wretches chained up looking at the shadows of those things on the walls, and it's just that the shape of the wall in front of me is different from the shape of the wall in front of the Grecian--" "--so that given a shadow projected on your wall is going to adopt a different shape from the same shadow projected on his wall, where the different wall-shapes here correspond to let's say your modern scientific worldview versus his ancient pagan worldview." "Yeah. That Plato's Cave metaphor." At this very moment some wag of a prison guard, out in the corridor, throws a switch and shuts off all of the lights. The only illumination now is from the screensaver on Randy's laptop, which is running animations of colliding galaxies. "I think we can stipulate that the wall in front of you, Randy, is considerably flatter and smoother, i.e. it generally gives you a much more accurate shadow than his wall, and yet it's clear that he's still capable of seeing the same shadows and probably drawing some useful conclusions about the shapes of the things that cast them." "Okay. So the Athena that you honor on your medallion isn't a supernatural being--" "--who lives on a mountain in Greece, et cetera, but rather whatever entity, pattern, trend, or what-have-you that, when perceived by ancient Greek people, and filtered through their perceptual machinery and their pagan worldview, produced the internal mental representation that they dubbed Athena. The distinction being quite important because Athena-the-supernatural-chick-with- the-helmet is of course nonexistent, but 'Athena' the external-generator-of- the-internal-representation-dubbed-Athena-by-the-ancient-Greeks must have existed back then, or else the internal representation never would have been generated, and if she existed back then, the chances are excellent that she exists now, and if all that is the case, then whatever ideas the ancient Greeks (who, though utter shitheads in many ways, were terrifyingly intelligent people) had about her are probably still quite valid." "Okay, but why Athena and not Demeter or someone?" "Well, it's a truism that you can't understand a person without knowing something about her family background, and so we have to do kind of a quick Cliff's Notes number on the ancient Greek Theogony here. We start out with Chaos, which is where all theogonies start, and which I like to think of as a sea of white noise--totally random broadband static. And for reasons that we don't really understand, certain polarities begin to coalesce from this--Day, Night, Darkness, Light, Earth, Sea. Personally, I like to think of these as crystals--not in the hippy-dippy Californian sense, but in the hardass technical sense of resonators, that received certain channels buried in the static of Chaos. At some point, out of certain incestuous couplings among such entities, you get Titans. And it's arguably kind of interesting to note that the Titans provide really the full complement of basic gods--you've got the sun god, Hyperion, and an ocean god, Oceanus, and so on. But they all get overthrown in a power struggle called the Titanomachia and replaced with new gods like Apollo and Poseidon, who end up filling the same slots in the organizational chart, as it were. Which is kind of interesting in that it seems to tie in with what I was saying about the same entities or patterns persisting through time, but casting slightly different shaped shadows for different people. Anyway, so now we have the Gods of Olympus as we normally think of them: Zeus, Hera, and so on. "A couple of basic observations about these: first, they all, with one exception I'll get to soon, were produced by some kind of sexual coupling, either Titan-Titaness or God-Goddess or God-Nymph or God-Woman or basically Zeus and whom- or whatever Zeus was fucking on any particular day. Which brings me to the second basic observation, which is that the Gods of Olympus are the most squalid and dysfunctional family imaginable. And yet there is something about the motley asymmetry of this pantheon that makes it more credible. Like the Periodic Table of the Elements or the family tree of the elementary particles, or just about any anatomical structure that you might pull up out of a cadaver, it has enough of a pattern to give our minds something to work on and yet an irregularity that indicates some kind of organic provenance--you have a sun god and a moon goddess, for example, which is all clean and symmetrical, and yet over here is Hera, who has no role whatsoever except to be a literal bitch goddess, and then there is Dionysus who isn't even fully a god--he's half human--but gets to be in the Pantheon anyway and sit on Olympus with the Gods, as if you went to the Supreme Court and found Bozo the Clown planted among the justices. "Now what I'm getting to here is that Athena was exceptional in every way. To begin with she wasn't created through sexual reproduction in any kind of normal sense; she sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus. According to some versions of the story, this happened after Zeus fucked Metis, about whom we'll hear more in due course. Then he was warned that Metis would later give birth to a son who would dethrone I him, and so he ate her, and later Athena came out of his head. Whether you buy into the Metis story or not, I think we can still agree that something a little peculiar was going on with the nativity of Athena. She was also exceptional in that she did not participate in the moral squalor of Olympus; she was a virgin." "Aha! I knew that was a picture of a virgin on your medallion." "Yes, Randy, you do have a keen eye for virgins. Hephaestus leg-fucked her once but did not achieve penetration. She's quite important in the Odyssey, but there are really very few myths, in the usual sense of that term, that involve her. The one exception really proves the rule: the story of Arachne. Arachne was a superb weaver who became arrogant and began taking credit herself, instead of attributing her talent to the gods. Arachne went so far as to issue an open challenge to Athena, who was the goddess of weaving, among other things. "Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god's wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him--the helpless, innocent victim, that is--into let's say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a dish of turtle food just out of his reach and leaves him out in the sun forever to be repeatedly disemboweled by army ants and stung by hornets or something. So if Arachne had dissed anyone else in the Pantheon, she would have been just a smoking hole in the ground before she knew what hit her. "But in this case, Athena appeared to her in the guise of an old woman and recommended that she display the proper humility. Arachne declined her advice. Finally Athena revealed herself as such and challenged Arachne to a weaving contest, which you'll have to admit was uncommonly fair-minded of her. And the interesting thing is that the contest turned out to be a draw--Arachne really was just as good as Athena! Only problem was that her weaving depicted the gods of Olympus at their shepherd-raping, interspecies-fucking worst. This weaving was simply a literal and accurate illustration of all of those other myths, which makes this into a sort of meta-myth. Athena flew off the handle and whacked Arachne with her distaff, which might seem kind of like poor anger management until you consider that during the struggle against the Giants, she wasted Enceladus by dropping Sicily on him! The only effect was to cause Arachne to recognize her own hubris, at which she became so ashamed that she hanged herself. Athena then brought her back to life in the form of a spider. "So anyway, you probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and of wisdom, as well as crafts--such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war and Hestia the goddess of home economics--why the redundancy? But a lot's been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I'm trying to impart to you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called 'dike' by the Greeks. That's not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of 'metis', which means cunning or craftiness, and which you'll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story. Interestingly Metis (the personage, not the attribute) provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the baby gods he'd swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious--crafts are just the practical application of metis." "I associate the word 'crafts' with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp," Randy says. "I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?" "It's all bad translation. The word that we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology." "Okay. Now we're getting somewhere." "Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though--maybe because--they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing--war. Heracles, who is one of Athena's human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he's completely incompetent. He's chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze vessel for thirteen months. He's wounded by one of Odysseus's drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he's not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he's screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and--get this--his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seems very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are. "Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let's not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) 'metis'. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself 'sacker of cities') it's clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring--Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares's psychopathic sons. I mean, the records aren't totally clear--it's not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys--but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares. "So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon's head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She's always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares." "I don't know, Enoch. Defensive versus offensive war, maybe?" "The distinction is overrated. Remember when I said that Athena got leg- fucked by Hephaestus?" "It generated a clear internal representation in my mind." "As a myth should! Athena/Hephaestus is sort of an interesting coupling in that he is another technology god. Metals, metallurgy, and fire were his specialties--the old-fashioned Rust Belt stuff. So, no wonder Athena gave him a hard-on! After he ejaculated on Athena's thigh, she's all 'eeeeeyew!' and she wipes it off and throws the rag on the ground, where it somehow combines with the earth and generates Erichthonius. You know who Erichthonius was?" "No." "One of the first kings of Athens. You know what he was famous for?" "Tell me." "Invented the chariot--and introduced the use of silver as a currency." "Oh, Jesus!" Randy clamps his head between his hands and makes moaning noises, only for a little while. "Now in many other mythologies you can find gods that have parallels with Athena. The Sumerians had Enki, the Norse had Loki. Loki was an inventor- god, but psychologically he had more in common with Ares; he was not only the god of technology but the god of evil too, the closest thing they had to the Devil. Native Americans had tricksters--creatures full of cunning--like Coyote and Raven in their mythologies, but they didn't have technology yet, and so they hadn't coupled the Trickster with Crafts to generate this hybrid Technologist-god." "Okay," Randy says, "so obviously where you're going with this is that there must be some universal pattern of events that when filtered through the sensory apparatus and the neural rigs of primitive, superstitious people always gives rise to internal mental representations that they identify as gods, heroes, etc." "Yes. And these can be recognized across cultures, in the same way that two persons with Root Reps in their mind might 'recognize' me by comparing notes." "So, Enoch, you want me to believe that these gods--which aren't really gods, but it's a nice concise word--all share certain things in common precisely because the external reality that generated them is consistent and universal across cultures." "That is right. And in the case of Trickster gods the pattern is that cunning people tend to attain power that un-cunning people don't. And all cultures are fascinated by this. Some of them, like many Native Americans, basically admire it, but never couple it with technological development. Others, like the Norse, hate it and identify it with the Devil." "Hence the strange love-hate relationship that Americans have with hackers." "That's right." "Hackers are always complaining that journalists cast them as bad guys. But you think that this ambivalence is deeper-seated." "In some cultures. The Vikings--to judge from their mythology--would instinctively hate hackers. But something different happened with the Greeks. The Greeks liked their geeks. That's how we get Athena." "I'll buy that--but where does the war-goddess thing come in?" "Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and aggressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted." "You must meet my friend Avi." "Who is going to fight them off, Randy?" "I'm afraid you're going to say we are." "Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshipers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshipers aren't going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn't very nice, but it's a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. 'Metis'." "Tactical cunning, like Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, or--" "Both that, and technological cunning. From time to time there is a battle that is out-and-out won by a new technology--like longbows at Crecy. For most of history those battles happen only every few centuries--you have the chariot, the compound bow, gunpowder, ironclad ships, and so on. But something happens around, say, the time that the Monitor, which the Northerners believe to be the only ironclad warship on earth, just happens to run into the Merrimack, of which the Southerners believe exactly the same thing, and they pound the hell out of each other for hours and hours. That's as good a point as any to identify as the moment when a spectacular rise in military technology takes off--it's the elbow in the exponential curve. Now it takes the world's essentially conservative military establishments a few decades to really comprehend what has happened, but by the time we're in the thick of the Second World War, it's accepted by everyone who doesn't have his head completely up his ass that the war's going to be won by whichever side has the best technology. So on the German side alone we've got rockets, jet aircraft, nerve gas, wire-guided missiles. And on the Allied side we've got three vast efforts that put basically every top-level hacker, nerd, and geek to work: the codebreaking thing, which as you know gave rise to the digital computer; the Manhattan Project, which gave us nuclear weapons; and the Radiation Lab, which gave us the modern electronics industry. Do you know why we won the Second World War, Randy?" "I think you just told me." "Because we built better stuff than the Germans?" "Isn't that what you said?" "But why did we build better stuff, Randy?" "I guess I'm not competent to answer, Enoch, I haven't studied that period well enough." "Well the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshiped Ares and we worshiped Athena." "And am I supposed to gather that you, or your organization, had something to do with all that?" "Oh, come now, Randy! Let's not allow this to degenerate into conspiracy theories." "Sorry. I'm tired." "So am I. Goodnight." And then Enoch goes to sleep. Just like that. Randy doesn't. To the Cryptonomicon! --From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added 20021031 ** % And here we could talk about the Plato's Cave thing for a while--the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors--it slices! it dices! --Enoch Root from Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % They are having an energetic and very happy conversation--though it looks a bit forced--because, to a man, they are carrying long weapons out in plain sight. One of them has a hunting rifle, and each of the others is slinging a rudimentary-looking gun whit a banana clip sticking out of the side. This scene, not surprisingly, has caught the attention of the police, who have surrounded these four with squad cars, and who are standing at the ready with rifles and shotguns. It is an oddity of the law in many jurisdictions that, while carrying (say) a concealed one-shot .22 derringer requires a license, openly carrying (e.g.) a big game rifle is perfectly legal. Concealed weapons are outlawed or at least heavily regulated, and unconcealed ones are not. So a lot of Secret Admirers--who tend to be gun nuts--have take to going around conspicuously armed as a way of pointing out the absurdity of those rules. Their point is this: who gives a shit about concealed weapons anyway, since they are only useful for defending oneself against assaults by petty criminals, which almost never happens? The real reason the Constitution provides for the right to bear arms is defending oneself against oppressive governments, and when it comes to that, your handgun is close to useless. So (according to these guys) if you are going to assert your right to keep and bear arms you should do it openly, by packing something really big. --From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Randy: That time in Seattle--during the lawsuit--was a fucking nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX. Avi: Well, that's something. Normally those two are mutually exclusive --From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability. --From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % It turns out that, like all ethnic groups that have been consistently screwed for a long time, the Inner Qwghlmians have great music. --From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Anyone with thoughts of summoning federal authorities to apprehend me upon arrival at SFO & expose my misdeeds & subject me to public disgrace & compulsory consciousness-raising workshops is advised to acquaint him or herself with the Shaftoes first & to at least remain open to possibility that Dad's martial prowess in combination with traditional feelings of psychotic protectiveness toward his female offspring, combined with Daughter's habit of carrying large Palawan stabbing weapon known as a kris, and Daughter's overall psychic fierceness & physical fitness & courage exceeding that of Yours Truly, mitigate any perceived power imbalance, particularly given that most of our interactions take place in settings which lend themselves admirably to discreet homicide & corpse disposal. --Randy Lawrence Waterhouse, explaining why attempting to charge him with Sexual Harassment is unreasonable under the circumstances. From Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "All right," he said at last. "Keep your world, Skora. Live on it comfortably while the rest of the human race nearly kill themselves in another war. You'll be safe. Dredge up a few more tricks from Aevan's notes. You like being alone--most provincials do. And it won't matter in your time. But when the children of my people find mechanical ways of doing what you do with your minds--when they sweep in here with ten battleships for each that your people can handle--remember that you could have joined us and saved us from the enemy that burned this planet once already. When that happens, cry for the brotherhood of men. See what they think of a single planet that kept its secrets to itself. Oh, damn it, send us back to Lari's and let us alone!" --Captain Derek, from "Superstition" by Lester Del Rey ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % What in Judas Rockin' Priest is goin' on around here?! --Captain Murphy, from "Sealab 2021" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "If it's love toward a woman or an android imitation, it's sex. Wake up and face yourself, Deckard. You wanted to go to bed with a female type android--nothing more, nothing less. I felt that way, on one occasion. When I had just started bounty hunting. Don't let it get you down; you'll heal. What's happened is that you've got your order reversed. Don't kill her--or be present when she's killed--and then feel physically attracted. Do it the other way." Rick stared at him. "Go to bed with her first--" "--and then kill her," Phil Resch said succinctly. His grainy, hardened smile remained. You're a good bounty hunter, Rick realized. Your attitude proves it. But am I? Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he had begun to wonder. --From 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phillip K. Dick. ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Valentine: Listen--you know your tea's getting cold. Hannah: I like it cold. Valentine: (Ignoring that) Listen anyway. Your tea gets cold by itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. Do you think that's odd? Hannah: No. Valentine: Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It's a nice one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. Nothing is for no reason. All those energetic atoms bouncing out of your tea mug, they're mixing in with the roomful of atoms till they can't mix any more--maximum disorder, evenly spread, and it won't go backwards. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. We're all going to end up at room temperature. --From 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Valentine: It may all prove to be true. Hannah: It can't prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false yet. Valentine: (Pleased) Just like science. --From 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Somebody call Guinness. I'm about to go from zero to drunk in twenty dollars. --Div, the alcoholic DivX Player. From www.penny-arcade.com 2001-03-16 ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Gabe: You know what my mom used to say: "When life gives you shit," you just... Uh... Tycho: Make Shit-ade? What? Gabe: Wait, it's coming to me. --From www.penny-arcade.com 2000-03-10 ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. --Valentine, from 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Thomasina: God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers? Septimus: We do. Thomasina: Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manufacture? Septimus: I do not know. Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet. Septimus: He has mastery of equations which lead into infinites where we cannot follow. Thomasina: What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze. We will start with something simple. --From 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary. --The Stolen Journals From "God Emperor Of Dune" by Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "You and I, Moneo, whatever else we do, we provide good theater." Moneo peered at Leto's face. "Lord?" "The rites of the religious festival of Bacchus were the seeds of Greek theater, Moneo. Religion often leads to theater. They will have fine theater out of us." --From "God Emperor Of Dune" by Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to be alive. It can have magic, that time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like that again. --Duncan Idaho From "God Emperor Of Dune" by Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices." "Acceptable choices?" "They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems." "But don't they sometimes need more information to make..." "A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors." "And good administrators?" "Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it's too late to make corrections." --Leto Atreides II lecturing Hwi Noree. From "God Emperor Of Dune" by Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I am Galileo. I stand here and tell you: "Yet it moves." That which moves can exert its force in ways no mortal power ever dared stem. I am here to dare this. --The Stolen Journals From "God Emperor Of Dune" by Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I was a Nubian princess destined to be the next Spice Girl, Caribbean Spice. --John Stewart ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life," Stilgar said, accepting the tray with coffee as it was passed in the door. --From Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced. --The Open-Ended Proof from The Panoplia Prophetica --From Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % One learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. --Frank Herbert ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. --Law and Governance The Spacing Guild Manual --From Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Andy: Hey Kev, ya want some spaghetti? Kevin: Andy offers Kevin spaghetti at nine. If Kevin is seven years older than pudding, how many liters of Andy does it take to get to Denver? Andy: There's...um...parmesan cheese in the refrigerator. --From 'Mission Hill' ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "All men are interlopers, old friend." "You're a deep one, aren't you, Stil?" "Deep enough. I can see how we clutter the universe with our migrations. Muad'dib gave us something uncluttered." --From Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Alia crossed to her brother, sensing his utter sadness. She touched a tear on his cheek with a Fremen gesture of awe, said: "We must not grieve for those dear to us before their passing." "Before their passing," Paul whispered. "Tell me, little sister, what is BEFORE?" --From Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "How might you serve us?" Paul asked. "In any way my Lord's wishes and my capabilities agree," replied the ghola Hayt. --From Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % There are two types of people in the world. The ones with loaded guns and the ones who dig. You dig. --The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) to Tuco (Eli Wallach) as he tosses him a shovel. From "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Sitting Guy: I can't believe Jesus and Allah are fighting again! Someone's gonna get their eye poked out! Standing Guy: Bah! We're living in the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, and people STILL wage war to impress invisible superheroes who live in outer space! I thought we would all be chilling out in solar-powered flying cars by now! Sitting Guy: I wish the U.S. and al-Qaeda could team up to overthrow The Kingdom of Heaven! We've already teamed up to guarantee the total fucking ruination of millions of Afghan lives--why not take it to the next level? Could there be a more slammin' Holy War than declaring war on the Holy One? Now THOSE would be some kick-ass trading cards! --from "Get Your War On" at www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I know! I want to take out a full-page ad in the newspaper: "Dear Whoever is Mailing All the Anthrax All Over the Place--You can be my ruler! Now can I please just forswear alcohol and denounce Israel or whatever so I can fucking open my credit card offers without thinking my organs are gonna turn inside-out?" --from "Get Your War On" at www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I need a spirit who can touch my life I need a voice to speak the truth I need a soul who will be on my side I need a hope I'll never lose Someone like you Somebody like you Someone like you Someone like you Sometimes I wonder if my dreams are right Sometimes I knew they'd all come true I need somebody who can move my world Someone who knows just what to do Someone like you Someone like you Somebody like you Someone like you Someone like you I need a spirit who can touch my life I need a voice to speak the truth I need a soul who will be on my side I need a hope I'll never lose Someone like you Somebody like you Someone like you Someone like you --"Someone" Paul Oakenfold ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Nick "No-Fly Zone" Falzone: Do you play sports Russel? Russel: I used to bowl when I was an alcoholic. --from Pushing Tin ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out. --from "Shadow of the Hegemon" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Whoever is doing the bad things, that's the bad guy. You're the sheriff, sir, whether people approve of you or not. Do your job. --Colonel Graff to the Strategos, from "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far so good." --Colonel Graff and Sister Carlotta, from "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "We'll never decipher their language," said Miro, "because it's not a language. It's a set of biological commands. They don't talk. They don't abstract. They just make molecules that do things to each other. It's as if the human vocabulary consisted of bricks and sandwiches. Throw a brick or give a sandwich, punish or reward. If they have abstract thoughts we're not going to get them through reading these molecules." --Miro Ribeira, talking about the language of the Descoladores, from "Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "Nobody's rational," said Miro. "We all act because we're sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationales are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons." --Miro Ribeira, from "Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet. --Ender Wiggin, from "Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "... we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them nothing to deploy it--" "Not nothing," said Ender. "Nothing," said Valentine, "just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is to deposit it in every available female--and to make special efforts to deposit it in the healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible." "I've done the wandering," said Ender. "Somehow I missed out on the copulating." "I'm speaking of overall trends," said Valentine. "there are always strange individuals who don't follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be sure there'll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to establish and stay. If we can't get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male who'll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will. "So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers--by suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise, there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will reach adulthood. "Our whole history, all that I've ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine and had a family--it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic strategies. We get pulled in those two directions. "Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts--those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male. "And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow mainly the male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-of-the-moment copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those low-status males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and pillage their brains out when the win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior--but also a viable acting-out of the genetic strategy." ... as Ender made his own private evaluations of Valentine's interpretation of human history, Planter showed his own response by lying back in his chair, a gesture that spoke of scorn. "I'm supposed to feel better because humans are also tools of some genetic molecule?" "No," said Ender. "You're supposed to realize that just because a lot of behavior can be explained as responses to the need of some genetic molecule, it doesn't mean that all pequenino behavior is meaningless." "When a brothertree gives his wood," said Planter, "it's supposed to mean that he sacrifices for the tribe. Not for a virus." "If you can look beyond the tribe to the virus, then look beyond the virus to the world," said Ender. "The descolada [virus] is keeping this planet habitable. So the brothertree is sacrificing himself to save the whole world." "Very clever," said Planter. "But you forget--to save the planet, it doesn't matter which brothertrees give themselves, as long as a certain number do it." "True," said Valentine. "It doesn't matter to the descolada [virus] which brothertrees give their lives. But it matters to the brothertrees, doesn't it? And it matters to brothers like you, who huddle into those houses to keep warm. You appreciate the noble gesture of the brothertrees who died for you, even if the descolada [virus] doesn't know one tree from another." --From "Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods want to teach you how to be just like them." --Ender Wiggin, from "Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I don't know anybody, and nobody knows me. We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we "understand." Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then. --Miro Ribeira, thinking, from "Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % You can't astrally project in a sweater vest!! --some guy on "Sliders" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % They [whites] do not trust their leaders, and yet they follow them. When we do not trust a leader, he is finished. It is bad for a man to be obeyed too often. --Sam Three-Arrows, from the "Illuminatus!" trilogy ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % That which fascinates us is, by definition, true. Metaphorically speaking, of course. --M. Emmett Walsh, "The X-Files" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a green dress. But not a real green dress, that's cruel. --The Bare Naked Ladies ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Besides, how are we supposed to explain you to Mr. Roper? --Peter, from "Family Guy," speaking to Death ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Get closer to me far away. --Talking Heads, "Stop Making Sense" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Isamu: I bought you lunch TWICE in high school! Guld: I bought you lunch THIRTEEN times in high school! --From "Macross Plus" during a heated fighter plane battle ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % The Fourth Dimension is just one big crazy do not enter clambake jungle of weirdity -- and how does it work? Never mind! --The Tick ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % We sell donuts...coffee and donuts...it depends what you mean by human. --Donut shop owner in "Blood and Donuts" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that. What I really want to do with my life - what I want to do for a living - is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it. --Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), to James Court (John Mahoney), from "Say Anything" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % He drinks from nine to five then from five to nine. Always drunk and going crazy. Always drunk, going crazy, you better believe it. --Less Than Jake ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "If I had eleven toes I would use one for a nose, Which I haven't got Because it's much too hot." He looked at the professor and said, "It is too hot for a nose, isn't it?" --The Oinck from Julie Edwards' "The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Peter: Stewie, would you like some ice cream? Stewie: Very well, but no sprinkles. For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you!" --from "Family Guy" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % We don't actually know how or when man first landed on the moon, but our Fungineers think it might have happened something like this: "We're whalers on the moon; We sing a happy tune;..." --from 'Futurama' ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % You can't spill a pig and scald yourself. --John Steinbeck ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % To be or not to be that is the *fzbt*. --Typing monkey #1988423774638247853487 ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Don't knock on death's door... ring death's doorbell and run away. Death HATES it when you do that. ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Jimmy crack corn and I don't care. ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Reality is green and red striped shit with giraffe legs and a bowler hat. ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Music is the ultimate drug. Sure, orgasms are great, but are they DIGITAL? ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Interviewer: "How do you sleep at night?" Rainier Wolfcastle: "On a big pile of money, with many beautiful women." --From "The Simpsons" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Where am I gonna get a piece of metal? Here?... In space?... At this time of night? --Ted Stryker, "Airplane II: The Sequel" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Superintendent Chalmers: Aurora Borealis? In this part of the country? At this time of year? At this time of day? Localized entirely within your kitchen?!? Principal Skinner: Yes. Chalmers: May I see? --From "The Simpsons" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Mrs. Skinner: Seymour, the house is on fire! Skinner: No, mother, its just the northern lights. --From "The Simpsons" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "Ah, Homer, you know your money's no good here... Hey, wait a minute, this is *real* money!" --Moe, from "The Simpsons" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Mr. Burns: You there! Use an open-faced club. A sand wedge! Homer: Mmmm... Open faced club sandwich... --from "The Simpsons" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "O, sandwich maker from Bob!" He pronounced. He paused and furrowed his brow with pious contemplation. "Life will be a very great deal less weird without you!" Arthur was stunned. "Do you know," he said "I think that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me." --from "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. --from "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened. --from "The Restaurant At the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % The ships hung in the air, the exact same way that bricks don't --from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % "Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself into its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it." "And what happened?" "It committed suicide." --Marvin, explaining. From "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % If you want to survive in life, you've got to know where your towel is. --from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. --from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time ** % I was in Paris once with my wife... boy am I glad she's dead. --Cowboy Guy from "The Sure Thing" ** Added Long Long Ago in the Before Time **