i was talking with brian zuzga this morning. he says your transformation into a twinkie has been really frightening. :-) - if you don't like what you see in the movies, you call it sex and violence. If you do like what you see, you call it romance and adventure. - Jesus not only saves, but He also frequently makes backups.--Unknown - curiosity didn't kill the cat, i got him with a 12 gauge.. - ... and i would walk 500 miles, but that would make me too damn tired. -"the complainers" - "gravity doesn't exist. the earth sucks." - ... We now ask the question "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" --- Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" Mind, October 1950 Turing may have been smart, but he was no Bill Gates. Little did Turing imagine that so little progress would be made in A.I. that after 44 years of government largesse, a Pentium running Windows NT would be easy to distinguish from a human. When did you ask a person for help and hear "Syntax error 112"? When did a human being suck down 16 MB of RAM and then complain about not having enough space? - I've never fallen in love. -I've stepped in it a few times, though. - It's hard to work in groups when you're omnipotent - Q - God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time*. --"Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - You can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. - Big Brother Bill is your friend. Freedom is slavery. Knowledge is ignorance. Windows is a damn good OS. - "For every complex phenomenon, there is a clear, simple, and logical explanation . . . . . . and it is always wrong." - "Yeah, MIT is diverse... some people like Star Trek: The Next Generation while others prefer the original series." "What about DS9?" replies the defensive MIT student - "DNA is assembly code and Nature obviously pulled some all-nighters" - It is better to rule in New Jersey than to serve in Heaven. - "I don't think so," said Rene Descartes. Just then, he vanished. - Mufasa: Look son. All this land is mine. And you are my son. Come with me and we will rule it together as father an son. Simba: NO!!!! NEVER!!!! - There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and Unix. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson - "Properly done science is a sort of masochistic game where one beats one's head against a wall until it falls down, and then goes in search of another wall." --Steven Vogel - I was a lonely young computer geek With a program due 'most every week But I guess that I was meant to freak The Day That UNIX Died And I was singin: Bye, bye, nroff, rogue and vi Gave my program to Phil Levy but Phil Levy was high, The boys on the board were sayin' "fuck this, goodbye." Singin' this'll be the day that I die... This'll be the day that I die - Well, it should be stated that I'm dating him in spite of the fact that he's a SIPB member and I was a prospective well before I started dating him and we did not meet becaus [sic] of SIPB. -harrison - Jesus was never one for being splashy. -C. L. Hendrick - A balanced life is a myth perpetuated by liberal arts schools. - If you lived on Athena, you'd be home by now. [FYI, Athena is MIT's computer system] - Before you try Reality, be sure to read the directions and learn how to use it properly. - "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."--anon. - everybody loves me baby, what's the matter with you? Baby, what I did to offend you? --Don McClean - "I am not a nazi. Your mother may call me her `Fuhrer,' but that is another matter entirely." -A poster on soc.culture.greek responding to a turk's charge of his being a nazi. - Highlander: There can be only one. Highlander II: There should have only been one. Highlander, The series: Never should have been one. Highlander III: Dear god, not another one! - >> But Turkey also has strong allies like Macedonia, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, >> Kazakhistan, Ozbekistan, Turkmenistan. >United Barbarians, sound like a good airline name. Good choice. May I also suggest the alternatives "Barbarian Airlines" and "Air Barbarian". -more flamage from soc.culture.greek - Life is a noxious disease, sexually transmitted and inevitably fatal - the hotel of my mind hath many vacancies - Personally, I like slim, sleek... CPU boxes. Flatscreen monitors are also a plus :) I like my women with big hard disks. -zephyrs from class zsex - Ankh if you love Isis - The good Christian should beware the mathematican and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicans have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell. - St. Augustine - Sometimes you just have to stop and eat the roses. -Miranda - The problem is not that they are [members of a certain group]. The problem is that they are American, and therefore stupid. -What I would really like to say while flaming on certain religious newsgroups. - A stitch in time saves the fabric of the universe. - Immigrants from homelands of ancient civilisations (Greeks, Jews, Hindus, Chinese) excel in the diaspora yet are unable to do so in their homelands. Older arguments claimed this diasporetic behavior provided genetic (and cultural) hoarding (or diversity) as well as the development of economic hinterlands. It seems, however, that the homelands are so schlerotically obsessed with preserving and worshipping their old successes, that they are afraid to risk new ones. -Aleximenes (pseudonymous modern Greek "philosopher") - "A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician treats a patient, and look upon them as sick." -- Seneca - Life moves pretty fast. If you stop and take a look around for a while, it will pass you right by. -Dean paraphrasing Ferris Buehler, who was clearly a slacker - Been there, done that, seen the homepage. -being jaded in the 90's - People may think I'm evil, but I really have the heart of a little girl...and it's sitting right on my desk. -one of Sue Leite's zsig - Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts. - C - combining the low-level versatility of assembly language with the powerful syntax of assembly language. - Stoicism: This shit happening is good for me. - ``teaching young people to read and play music makes them depraved and leads to corruption.'' - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran - Elaine: "Do you own any Dvorak?" Dean: "Is that a kind of alcohol?" - Do you ever long for the days when the university was a revered institution, a shining city on a hill when people could ponder the whys of existence and search for the meaning of life? Neither do I! - Ahh, now I see your critical mistake. You are assuming that a Y chromosome is required for intelligence, when clearly a Y chromosome inhibits rational thought and impairs efficiency, creativity, and decision-making skills. --Surak Wed Feb 3 1993 15:45:53 - [The war propaganda] was utter nonsense but it was nonsense that a large number of men with heavy weapons believed... -_The Fall of Yugoslavia_ by Misha Gleny - 5.270 -- Applied internship in Iraq's chemical weapons plants - We are the Engineers You will be assimilated Resistance is V/I - One does not "invade southern Albania" one "liberates Northern Epiros" -Dean explaining politically correct Greek terminology - One of the signs which distinguish a well-brought-up child is that the left hand has become incapable of any independent action. -German anthropologist Rober Hertz - FOR HIRE Small Special Forces group available for midnight removal of pews, organs, electric vigil lamps, neon crosses, ugly icons, intimidation of parish council members, and all other things in defence of Orthodoxy. All it takes is expences paid for and a good lenten meal. To hire reply to this email message. __________________________________________________________________________ Joseph Olas jolas@indiana.edu - If you are a sorrority girl, you just disproved your thesis by sending a message about sorrorities to the Hellenic literature list. There are other "greeks" on this planet other than sorrority and fraternity members, and yes, they do have literature of their own. Dimos - Dean, you, clearly, do not spend too much time thinking about clothes. -shapere - They branded us as an International Pariah, well we'd rather be that, than US and German Ass Kissers. -The Bad Serb Club (http://www.computec-int.com/badserb.htm) - If you were advising a non-white female on how to get ahead in Silicon Valley, where would you tell her to direct her time and energy: Should she major in ethnic studies with a minor in sociology or top off her engineering degree with an MBA? Should she work in marketing or human resources, or in developing and manufacturing new products. Should she try to root out every last shred of bias, or spend her time writing the "killer application" that will make everybody rich? [...] The 21st century will belong to people who took AP calculus in high school. And physics. It will belong to people who look for opportunities and overlook obstacles. -Joanne Jacobs, San Jose Mercury News, June 27, 1996 - One finds free cheese only in a mousetrap. -Alexander Lebed - "H Pwmavia ki' av enepacev av8ei kai fepei ki' allo" "Even though it faded, the spirit of the Romans blooms and branches out again" - During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of US $1 million. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil. [Note: I later discovered that while the USA also started using pencils, the astronauts complained about problems with pieces of lead breaking off in a zero-G environment, potentially floating into places they shouldn't. After the development of the "space pen" was completed, the Soviets started buying them, as well, because they also were having problems with broken pieces of lead] - How did a programming language [Java] that's going to be used for mundane work like inventory and software management come to be considered so cool? It can only be the name. If Sun had called it Omnix or WebC or Bytecode Pro, we might never have heard of it. But Java? Java means you can use a cool coffee-cup logo and give products names like Roaster and Kona and Joe. Java means you can make references to Indonesia. Java means you can pretend you're doing something more romantic than writing code. - Java's a year old. Can it walk and talk yet? http://www.salon1999.com/weekly/java1960520.html - Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to files. - mock CERT Advisory about security holes in the Aliens' computer system from "Independence Day" - y' = e^y is more stable than DOS. - Hanz - It always amazes me when non Greeks try to tell Greek Orthodox what their language means. - Fr. John W. Morris - "You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising budget is big enough." - Ed Rollins - "There are two possibilities: We are alone in the universe or we are not. Either one boggles the mind." - "I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." J. Edgar Hoover - Degasusing is = scrambling the individual magnetic domains in the equipment to eliminate any unwanted magnetic bias. Much like what humans do by dropping acid. Both activities are recommended for the similar benefits that they yield. Richard Kramer - It's been pretty traumatic. I feel like half the man I used to be. I think the most dramatic effect of all the changes is that I've been sober ever since the beginning of classes. It's too clean. It doesn't feel like a place where you can get drunk and puke on a Thursday anymore. -Senior House President Christopher H. Barron '97, on the new renovations of his dorm. - Aside from its uses in making cloth, providing life-saving medicine and constructing rope, the cannabis plant has also been found to get you stoned off your ass. -"Marijuana Linked to Sitting Around and Getting High", _The Onion_ (http://www.theonion.com) - What kind of country are we living in- Germany? Russia? _Idaho_? -Zonker Harris, Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau - If a Greek child goes home complaining that his head was hit by a falling stone, the father will say it was from wearing glasses, while the mother will blame some food she considers too modern and the grandparents will say the bump was caused because the child forgot to make some superstitious, idolatrous, pseudoreligious ritual, but NO ONE will admit the child was actually hit by a stone. -Vasos Panagiotopoulos - Those who can, do, probably because we Greeks invented it first! - "We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." -- from _Programming_perl_ by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz - If you want to find idiotic behavior, you can always count on the Americans. -President Jacques Chirac of France - Foreign nations often refer to the U.S. as a country with no culture. Ha, we laugh in their face because we possess culture worth having. For instance, we have cereal, junk food, no respect for our parents, and a complete desire to be absolutely nothing. -David Chamberlain - "Of course, it would be easier to get to paradise with a full stomach, all snuggled up in a soft feather-bed, but what is required is to carry one's cross along the way, for the kingdom of God is not attained by enduring one or two troubles, but many!" Elder Anthony of Optina - "I believe that we should discriminate against people who can not spell. I believe that bad spelling is a choice, and that no one in their right mind would choose to be a bad speller. I believe that bad spellers should not be allowed to teach our children. I believe that bad spellers recruit others and hang around spelling bees. I believe that bad spelling is a disease that can be cured. I believe that people should read, study, and follow what is taught in the Dictionary." - "Our religion is not like a garment that we might change according to the circumstances; it is part and parcel of our bones and blood and personality ... If you try to force your will upon us we are ready to suffer and to be tortured and even to die. However, you should know in advance that there is no power on earth which can force us to change our religion because our covenant is not with man but with the Almighty God." -St. Vartan Mamigonian of Armenia addressing the Persians, 451 A.D. - I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent. [Arthur C. Clarke] - "James lives in a border town between genius and madness. Now that he's rich and famous, he's eccentric. I knew him when he was just crazy." -White House adviser Paul Begala on James Carville - Well its a about time you wrote back, I thought you left for Mount Athos to be a monk. -Vlad Jockovic commenting on my bad e-mailing habits - Americans want to believe you can be happy every single day of your life. The most you can hope for is to work hard and find some level of satisfaction -- and that only comes through a real engagement with life. -Ethan Watters, author of "Therapy's Delusions" - The truth is that I simply have little time to spare for fiction that eschews the plebeian "story" in favor of prose sent jumping through hoops, and not much more to spare for the sensitive drama of a youth coming to terms with his/her alcoholic/schizophrenic/anti-intellectual/homophobic/abusive parent/town/suburb as he/she contemplates and finally departs for the wider world, no matter how beautifully written. -Writer Jean Hanff Korelitz - Nowadays no diplomatic farce is complete without a cameo appearance by Jesse Jackson. -Columnist George Will, writing about the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia - CPs Find Underage Drinking at Bexley -MIT's Newspaper The Tech reporting on Bexley Hall. Obviously a slow news day. - "NO - then run Luke, run far away, if he can feel you presence than leave this place...I wish I could go with you" (But unfortuantly I have to return to my dressing room to snort another 5kgs of coke...) - Princess Leia, The part of the line we didn't hear in Return of the Jedi, in the scene with Leia and Luke on Endor (written by David Johnson) - Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else. -Daria - And this Jub-jub, or jar-jar, or whatever the #@$@%! his name is, is a breakthrough in computer generated nuisances. Not since Microsoft Word's animated paper-clip help buddy (or maybe Microsoft Bob) have computers been used to generate something so thoroughly annoying. -kzinti - a creature best thought of as a screaming John Leguizamo drag queen as channeled by Chris Tucker in a lizard suit -Star Wars:The Phantom Menace review from the washington post on Jar-Jar - "I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while Jar Jar is repeatedly dragged around with us mission after mission!" - Queen Amidala in a revised scene of Episode One http://home.neo.rr.com/dlr/antijj.htm - "That was a great speech. Every thinking American will vote for you." "That's not enough. I need a majority."--Mo Udall - An ounce of clue is worth a pound of corrective surgery. -sperry - got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordering the lobster - The people in that remote system are weak in The Clue, and the Dark Side of the Clue preys on them oft. -ocshwar, commenting on a Mississippi school district's banning the wearing of the Star of David because it was supposedly similar to a gang symbol in Miami - "Kids are not nice, innocent, flower-loving little rainbow children. Kids are all little bastards; they don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette." -- "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone. This is why I love watching the cartoon South Park. - "It's a special feeling I get when a friend falls in love...I feel so...so..." "Bitter?" "That's it exactly."--Doctor Doctor - It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. -Whittaker Chambers (yes, THAT Whittaker Chambers), on Objectivism - Yet despite all of this, the release of "The Phantom Menaces" makes "Return of the Jedi" look better than ever. The chief difference between the two is that the latter, unlike the former, has a reason for being made in the first place. -Spleen, after giving some negative commentary of RotJ at imdb.com - As soon as I step outside of the house, the disenfranchisement begins. My pasty complexion, bloodshot eyes, bad haircut and poor enunciation are no longer commonplace. I fear your strange machines and unfathomable customs. - A column in the Stanford Daily describing the dangers of Normal Human Beings - Trinity: I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. Neo: Duh... it's because I'm a grad student. -- The first draft of "The Matrix" :) - The term "moshing" refers to a charming form of interpersonal conduct at hard-rock concerts where audience members - mostly white teenage boys with no rhythm and a lot of hostility - smash their bodies into one another in lieu of actual dancing. -John Podhoretz, writing for The Weekly Standard - my job now isn't like high school. well, i guess it's like having a long saturday detention. -jl - The Anti-Serenity Prayer God grant me the anxiety to try to control the things I cannot control, the fear to avoid the things I can, and the neurosis to deny the difference. - [Rush] Limbaugh articulates the blindingly white anger of every short-sleeved Wal-mart assistant manager in America who's outraged because a black kid called him by his first name. -Dennis Miller - I'm going to milk this cow until it's as dry as a BYU freshman mixer. -Adan Bonin - Consumption of beer leads to military behavior. One day you're going to read about some scientist discovering that hops, in conjunction with certain strains of "yeast creatures," has a mysterious effect on some newly discovered region of the brain, making people want to kill -- but only in groups. With whisky, you might want to murder your girlfriend -- but beer makes you want to do it with your buddies watching. -Frank Zappa - Humans like to read about other people's depression, sexual confusion, artistic struggles and failed marriages, but we don't much like to read books that chronicle the brilliance of their authors' children. We don't want to know how young Harold saved another kid from drowning, became champion of the debate team and won honors at Yale. Not unless he plunged into a drug addiction afterward. - Emily Jenkins, "The dark side of puppy love", Salon Magazine - "The ultimate irony ... is that the Information Age [has] spawned such an uninformed and uninvolved population." -Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center - The high school drama department's role as an Island of Misfit Toys for socially isolated youth has led to more adult children living at home than the last three mini-recessions combined. -suck.com, July 24, 2000 - [The] X-Men trumps them all with the audacius breadth of its central metaphor, seeking not only to encompass the central lessons of the Holocaust but the competing philosophies of the American Civil Rights movement, specifically that little-reported portion of the struggle where Martin Luther King and Malcolm X funded elite militias that constantly beat the crap out of each other. -suck.com, August 4, 2000 - When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy. -Dave Barry - "In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. ... Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion?" -Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", Book 5 - [Some people's sense of] "importance" is that they're born and raised AMERICANS, from America's HEARTLAND - as if hailing from Missouri is some sort of an accomplishment, to hold over the head of someone who made the "mistake" of being born in a shithole like Cambodia. -suck.com 9/15/2000 - [Napster] reminds us of some story about some hole and some dike and some boy and his finger. Except in this case there is water everywhere and no wall. -ironminds.com 9/18/2000 - [T]he authors springboard to some wacky conclusions about the most overfed, overbundled and overprotected generation in American history. They say Millennials will soon remake America into a new country, a country that sounds an awful lot like East Germany, given how much time these youth spend playing organized sports, listening to the theme-park-style positivity of boy bands and dressing alike by wearing uniforms mandated by schools or peer pressure. -Sean O'Neil in flakmag.com reviewing the book "Millenials Rising" - A libertarian is a person who believes that all humans should live in total and absolute submission to market forces, at all times from birth to death, without any chance of escape. - Paul Treanor http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/libertarian.html - DEAN: Dates Ethnically Alien Nerds - Avi Weiss - For second-guessing ourselves and others is the rainbow on our cloudy day and the pot of fool's gold at the end of the tunnel of mixed metaphors. -suck.com 11/24/1999 - The acme of Culture, in Rosie [O'Donnell]'s world, would be a Ricky Martin/Barbra Streisand duet of "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" at Radio City Music Hall for the Celine Dion NBC Christmas special. Her brain is a landfill of junk culture, and she uses her show to promote the worst of it. - David Plotz, Slate Magazine 12/01/2000 - It's time to face the hard truth: No matter how devoutly we wish for it, the election standoff is not going to end in bloodshed. - suck.com 11/30/2000 - "I may be more of a romantic than some of you, so feel free to throw up if you have to." --- Prof. Ralph Noble - I'd rather throw my heart on the floor and have it stepped on than dress it up in the psychic equivalent of leather pants, a belly shirt and have it hidden behind some display case where the world will say "Oh yeah, she's so cool." -llh on Plastic http://www.plastic.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/09/2040253 - A lot of people seem to think that humor about a tragedy is offensive. They would probably say that it's disrespectful to the people who were killed. Having considered this, I'm putting myself under the General Public Humor License. It specifically states that people have the right to make jokes about my death, no matter how violent or brutal it may be. - Elendur http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/04/10/162211&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=9 - If you said P is NP tonight There would still be papers left to write I have a weakness I'm addicted to completeness - The suburban anti-drug warriors who provide much of the political impetus to the drug war are people who inhabit a culture that, in many ways, is bad for children. Divorce is terrible for children, yet the divorce rate among this cohort is over 50 percent. A family life centered around empty materialism is bad for children... One day, such people wake up and discover their children have serious emotional problems. Blaming "drugs" is easier than looking in the mirror. -Paul Campos - [M]y real beef with the tux is that it always makes me stop feeling like a svelte and dashing new media wiseacre and start feeling like a 300-pound German industrialist seeing Die Fledermaus in Hitler's personal box, sipping tawny port and listening to the Fuhrer rant about Von Runstedt's incompetence during the Entr'acte. -Magua, http://www.suck.com/fish/2001/05/29/ - A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: "Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time." When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most." -- source unknown - [T]his is not your usual, run-of-the-mill sex, but hot policy-wonk sex. -Arianna Huffington 08/06/99 - Vote Libertarian. We're different. We're stupid, but we're stupid in a new and refreshing way. And we're completely untried. So we can still pretend. Let us conduct our social experiment on you and your children today! We say, abolish the schools! You say you can't afford to send little Mikey and little Hermoine to private school? In libertopia they'll be free to sell themselves as indentured servants to our newest honorable capitalists, the former cocaine and heroin drug lords, in exchange for an education. Yes, we're fresh and we're different, and our ideas are not much more destructive than a hole on the head. We're bitterly opposed to government and we want to control your government today! -Kevin Curry - Sure, we all know that with gumption and hard work, in this land of opportunity you can overcome a mountain of life's disadvantages to reach the pinnacle of success. That's one option. But as Bush subtly reminded the Yale graduates, there is another option: With a mountain of life's advantages, you can overcome a disposition against working hard and a cultural distaste for vulgar striving and reach those same pinnacles anyway! -Michael Kinsley, Washington Post 07/06/2001 - Near as I can tell, American kids only know: 1)What their particular lifestyle clique wears to be cool 2)Which bands that clique thinks is cool 3)Where to buy the particular type of dope their clique uses. 4)Black slang, yo. -Post in a f---edcompany.com forum - Cheerleaders frighten the shit out of me. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Salutes. Pride rallies. Marching tunes. Ceaseless ridicule of anyone different. Callestinics (sp) programs. Ever seen cheerleaders in action? It's like Germany, 1939. -Welp, www.plastic.com, 8/15/2001 - Did you see the posting to the "Static" mailing list about the Suck Hit and Run on that Salon Media column on The New Republic piece on that Washington Post piece on the NYT Op-Ed on the debate surrounding Monica Lewinsky? -suck.com 07/15/98 - [M]uch of American politics has come to be based on the assumption that the rest of the world would eventually agree that the point of life was to acquire ever-larger televisions and sport utility vehicles. - Paul Campos - All the familiar action-movie elements were there: terrorists taking over a plane, panicked crowds, huge fireball explosions, Secret Service agents ushering the president to a secret underground military base in Nebraska to plan the next move. A news report revealed that the terrorists had planned to strike Air Force One. At any moment, it seemed a squadron of alien warships would materialize and begin to menace Jeff Goldblum. ... When the president finally appeared on TV, it was George W. Bush addressing the nation, not Bill Pullman or Harrison Ford. At the conclusion of his address, Bush did not grab a leggy blonde reporter out of the crowd and kiss her. When Americans finally staggered into the streets, desperate to talk to anyone to try to make sense of what they had just seen, there were no Attack On America collector cups waiting for them at Taco Bell. The dead and injured did not, like Jon Voight, stand up in their wheelchairs as the music swelled. And Ben Affleck was nowhere to be seen. - The Onion 9/26/2001 - We know that bin Laden and his collaborators, the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, espouse a radical vision of the world that bans alcohol, drugs, and most forms of popular entertainment-- one that forces women to cover themselves from head to toe. These zealots have shown a bloodthirsty willingness to inflict mass violence on an international scale to achieve their reactionary aims. But will we give in? Will we allow their terror campaign to cow us into abandoning our freedoms? In response to their violence, we must redouble our "decadent" practices that fly in the face of their distorted puritanical views! We must form patriotic columns streaming forth into nightclubs, bars, theaters, and casinos! We must offer rousing support for a woman's right to bare her flesh in public! And we must shun the moral preaching of the likes of Jerry Falwell, who merely echo what our adversaries stand for. For love of God and country, boogie on! -Writer to Dan Savage's advice column, 10/3/01 - You know what? I'm fairly conservative, I nod my head to Stanley Crouch and William F. Buckley - but [the comic strip] Mallard Filmore is so stupidly conservative, so reflexively obnoxious, that it made me want to punch _myself_ in the face for being conservative. That's an achievement, I tell you. -Darren MacLennan http://www.plastic.com/comments.pl?sid=01/10/15/1657257&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=40#42 - Csh for the users doomed to give in Sed for the programmers looking in /bin Awk for the hackers who make users cower Perl for the wizards who hold the true power One Kluge to rule them, One Kluge to find them One Kluge to bring them and in the dark bind them In the land of *NIX where the shadows lie - We all live in Pottersville now. Bedford Falls is gone. The plucky little Savings and Loan closed down years ago, just like in George's nightmare. Cleaned up, his evil eyebrows removed, armed with a good PR firm, Mr. Potter goes merrily about his business, "consolidating" the George Baileys of the world. To cling to dreams of a bucolic America where the little guy defeats the forces of Big Business and the policeman and the taxi driver and the druggist and the banker all sing Auld Lang Syne together is just to ask for heartbreak and confusion when you turn off the TV and open your front door. So don't fight it. It's a Pottersville world! Welcome jitterbuggers! -Gary Kamiya, Salon Magazine 12/22 - White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, with characteristic brilliance, described the situation well when he said early on that in this war Americans "need to watch what they say." He was not referring to national security secrets, and he was not threatening official censorship. He was describing an atmosphere in which cliches are sacrosanct and trying to say something interesting can be more trouble than it is worth. -Michael Kinsley, Slate Magazine 01/03/2002 - Any man worth his salt knows that the real reason to watch The World Is Not Enough was Sophie Marceau. Few men, if any, have met supermodel nuclear physicists. But a woman who's beautiful, intelligent, and freakin' insane? Now THAT we can relate to. -gerrymander on Plastic.com, 1/29/02 http://www.plastic.com/comments.pl?sid=02/01/29/1856233&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=1#14 - For reasons too complex for us to hazard here, the anti-intellectuals are finally on the side of power at its most unforgiving and voracious. And so they give a pass to those professors who are at the service of such power, while jeering anyone--inside or outside the Academy--who thinks to raise a fuss about how wrong it is. For them, this isn't something to discuss, because discussion is itself suspicious, even dangerous... -Mark Crispin Miller - All over this nation, Americans who might otherwise be in favor or racism, pollution, insurance gouging and police brutality have learned better, thanks to nicely articulated movie industry lectures. - The Simpleton, Feb. 13th http://www.simpleton.com - [W]e, as a culture, have no tolerance for natural colors. We want our whites to phosphoresce, our pinks to vibrate, and our orange soda to humiliate our orange juice. -Brunching Shuttlecocks http://www.brunching.com/ratings/sodaflavors.html - My other car is a cdr - Robert Conrad [commenting on Robert Blake]: "We can't sit around here and talk about things we don't know." Bill Maher: "That's the job of Fox News!" -Politically Incorrect 4/22/02 - You don't tug on superman's cape, you don't spit in the wind, and you don't run around in various foreign countries collecting and publishing information on their military units and movements. - wrestler on plastic 04/28/2002 (paraphrasing the Jim Croce song, "Don't mess around with Jim") - Jim Croce's song "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" offers unparalleled advice to people who would like to live peaceful and uncomplicated lives. As the lyrics go: "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with Jim." Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban's dislike for Western music may have caused them to overlook this very important lesson. - The Mackenzie Institute http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/commentary.html 12/08/01 - We can argue all day about whether free software is really more secure than proprietary software though, and we won't come to a satisfactory conclusion. This, however, does not change the fact that free software is more secure than proprietary software. - mr_roboto, metafilter.com, 5/2/02 http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/16838 - An argument can be made that NASCAR rules in presidential elections, and victory goes to the most convincing cracker. - Joe Klein, Slate Magazine http://slate.msn.com/?id=2065586 - [N]eo-liberal economics is to the early 21st century what leeching was to the 13th: 5 percent empiricism and 95 percent superstition. - Peter Muphy, "Milton Friedman wants sex? He can go fuck himself." http://www.plastic.com/comments.html?sid=02/04/12/041247&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=5#35 - As those of us who are immersed in American history know, many of our most popular presidents were corrupt. Grant. Harding. Eisenhower. It was apparent to every coherent voter in 1972 that Nixon was as crooked as Lombard Street, and he won 49 states. It is just something in the American psyche, something in each person with a soul, that responds with visceral warmth to a president whose every action says, "Fuck the common people." http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/satire/020517_AmericaLovesBush.htm - [O]ur problem with Bush is not so much that he's an idiot as that he is contemptuous of thought, complexity, ambiguity. He's proud of his closed mind. -Mark Crispin Miller - If there was ever a constituency that a lawmaker could comfortably tell to go fuck themselves, the 18-21 demographic is it. - Brian Jones, plastic.com 06/04/2002 - The Manic Episode is our friend. We need it to function. Without it, how would we alienate our friends and relatives, or do the laundry in a timely fashion? -Heather Havrilesky, 6/11/2002 http://rabbitblog.fillerama.com - When you decide you are refined, that you must sensitize your palate to only the highest quality, you give up something. The ability to accept less. Cheap wine will lose its pleasure once you've learned the finer aspects of wine tasting. A harmless romance flick will become revolting to you, once you've immersed yourself in cutting-edge cinema. ... Skip the $80 Merlot, enjoy some peach Arbor Mist with your girlfriend. Skip the hazelnut vanilla latte, pick up a sweet gas station cappuccino. And when you wake up and put the water on the stove, skip the Guatemalan-import-individually- hand-selected-bean- AAAA-extra-rich- special-French-press- ground-beans, and enjoy a perfectly normal, lovely smelling cup of Joe. From Folgers. - Dan Norton http://www.flakmag.com/misc/folgers.html - The guiding philosophy of the Good Enough Cookbook is to seek out ways one can, say, put in half the effort and get three-quarters of the desired result. The guiding philosophy of Martha is to seek out ways one can gain a 10 percent better result by doubling the effort put in. - Michael Kinsley, Slate Magazine http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067667&device= - The world was made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness. - Bull Durham - Let's face it: People like us are not normal at all. Most people dial in, check email, buy a CD from Amazon on occasion, and that's about it. I've told several people that DSL or cable is easily 50x faster than dialup. They look at me like I'm crazy, "Now why would I need to go so much faster? And doesn't that cost a whole lot?" It's like, you just want to bang your head against the wall. But when you consider how much TV normal people watch, it makes perfect sense. They don't really want unfiltered knowledge. They can't handle it. -irishkev, slashdot.org http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/28/1529253&mode=thread&tid=95&threshold=0 - [Christopher] Hitch[ens] is no longer the beautiful slender young man of the Left. Now he's just another middle-aged porker of the Right. -Alexander Cockburn - Treating an argument as if it deserves to be taken seriously does not make it so. -Paul Campos, on calls for attacking Iraq - Dinesh D'Souza, like many conservative commentators, writes as though he's _heard_ of satire, but never actually experienced it firsthand. - Tom Tomorrow - I've long wondered whether [Bob] Novak's ubiquity on cable talk shows is some kind of Democratic plot. - Andrew Sullivan http://www.salon.com/news/col/sullivan/2002/12/19/bush/index.html - Most journalists are so stupid, the fact that they are also catty, lazy, vengeful and humorless is often overlooked. - Ann Coulter, in a typically unironic (and ungrammatical) moment - September 11, 2001, has had all kinds of unintended consequences. One of the least tragic, but most irritating, has been an explosion of absolutely terrible writing. - Neal Pollack - Blogging is intrinsically pretentious. The vast majority of us are unqualified, inexperienced, and uninformed as far as politics goes, especially compared to the lifelong politicians we're critiquing. We don't operate off of a deeper newsbase than the average citizen has access to, and we don't have any sort of training that gives us tools that make our analysis unique and interesting. We're sitting around, plugging away at our keyboards because we think we've got something interesting to say and we think other people should be reading us. Calling this a pretentious practice is simply redundant. -Ezra of http://ezrak.blogspot.com - Both PBS and NPR cater their news to their audience's taste--an audience made up of lots of people who are interested in personal essays from somebody you've never heard of talking about the renewing powers of moving to New England to devote one's life to gardening. True enough--who doesn't love gardening? But is it news? -Dan, from atrios.blogspot.com 5/01/03 4:20pm - Bush "is smart enough to know that he's not particularly so he surrounds himself with smart people in much the same way a hole surrounds itself with a doughnut" - Dennis Miller - West coast people delude themselves into believing that everything is always good. East coasters realize that life is a relentless circus of horrors leading inevitably to their deaths. - Ari Benbasast - Every time you hear a cell phone or pager go off, think of Harrison Bergeron. -jfmurphy - Even people who didn't grow up in evangelical youth groups are acquainted with the Hypothetical Bus -- the great memento mori of our time. "You could walk out that door and get hit by a bus." ... As an enthusiastic supporter of public transportation, I often wish for a different symbol of our mortality. -Slacktivist http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2003/11/lb_the_hypothet.html - Caring less about what goes on in the world, I will know less about it; and knowing less, I will find that NPR once again offers a rich and thoughtful take on our national politics. - Iampwicke at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/1/19/225633/305 - Change is very difficult. there is enormous insitutional resistance to change... it is natural for people to resist, but it is also inevitable that we will win. - Howard Dean on his movement, suspending his campaign for the presidency, 2/18/2004 - I would love to have an insurance plan that would cover everyone. You know why? I'd finally get paid! - My father - Don't start dating someone just because you're too lazy to commit suicide. - Judy Tenuta - What is it about Bruce [Springsteen] that bothers you so? Is it his failure to address the postmodern condition, his reliance on linear song form? Is it all those beefcake butt shots and that precious Telecaster that seem to say that Foucault and Derrida never really existed, and even if they did exist he could blow them away in a blast of burned rubber on hot asphalt? Is it those short muscle sleeves and taut biceps evocative of smart-mouthed grease monkeys in small-town pool halls? - Cary Tennis trying to find out what the heck some woman's problem is 7/26/2004 http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2004/07/26/bruce/index.html - I figure you can be the judgmental cousin or the supportive cousin. I prefer being the supportive cousin. You have to gossip less, but you get invited to visit more often. -Marleigh 6/29/05 - Blaming the Democrats for not successfully challenging the war in Iraq is like blaming the cat you had neutered six years ago for allowing the dog to have another litter of puppies. - FYKshun 08/11/05, Metafilter http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/44206#1009909 - Libertarianism is just the adult-version of being a Goth. - Jadegold 09/08/2005 http://www.oliverwillis.com/2005/09/08/team-hate-america/#comment-5897 - those sports stat guys, who watch EVERY FOOTBALL GAME are the reason Futurama was always being preempted, which in turn caused the death of that delightful show. ... Foodies may have stupid specialty stores, but they limit themselves to a single goddamn TV station. I'm paying my cable company for what, 5, 6 ESPNs? I don't watch any of them. and their stupid games which I never watch are ALWAYS getting in the way of shows I actually do. fuck those guys. I may be a serious pigfucker about music, movies, books, and food, but I don't preempt your NASCAR race by teaching you to make stuffed bell peppers and then make you watch Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, followed by analysis of a Swedish Tango Metal band who did a recent album designed to perfectly sync up with the movie. karpad on sports fanatics, 10/18 http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/10/post_5.htm - Hmm, maybe we should set up a holistic ayurvedic homeopathic trepanation clinic. Because people need alternative medicine like they need...ah, screw it. - Dave Eaton 11/18/2005 http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/the_fetid_reek_of_quackery/#c49672 - I suppose expecting a service called "America On Line" to be reliable in england is a little optimistic... -Jacky Mallett, 12/21/2005 - If I had a dime for every person I encounter who is so obviously feigning contentment through gritted teeth, I could probably afford the booze and Zoloft I needed to get through life... -Donna http://pandagon.net/2006/06/12/diy-lobotomies-are-the-secret-of-happiness/#comment-107558 - Drunken redneck assholes don't stop being drunken redneck assholes by buying them a drink. In fact they become drunker, redder necked, and assholier. -John http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/06/my_most_embaras.html#comment-18585971 - There is a word for people who think homosexuality is a temptation - that word is "homosexual." -Dr. T http://pandagon.net/2006/06/23/another-homobigot-outraged-at-nea-marriage-equality-support/#comment-120290 - I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika. - Olin Shivers, The Scheme Shell Documentation http://www.scsh.net/docu.html - BREAKING: President Bush Really Big Doofus Yes, I grant you, this may have been reported in other outlets before. - Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo 7/28/2006 http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009218.php -- If an exchange between Al Sharpton and the Lieberman campaign ends with Sharpton sounding like the reasonable one you know things have become truly bizarre. - Artful, tpmcafe http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/aug/01/ct_sen_exclusive_sharpton_blasts_lieberman_for_racial_flyer_says_its_like_tactics_used_to_smear - Lieberman has literally run the worst campaign possible without a naked boy involved. - Steve Gilliard, 8/4/2006 http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/08/revenge-of-towns.html - > We need to make a clear, definative statement that we are watching, > keeping notes and making sure that Democrats act like Democrats I beg to differ. The Democratic party needs to start acting like a real political party, not like the Democrats. - Matthew Saroff 8/16/06 http://www.haloscan.com/comments/stevenewsblog/115570981954310912/#696749 - If Ross vouches for you, you can't be too freaky, nor not freaky enough. Probably just freaky enough to fit in around here. - Evan B. on my coming to DC - "Speaking of political whores, Senator Joe Lieberman could end up having a red-light district named for him." - Don Feder, Boston Herald - "I have always said that what makes blogging incredibly easy is the wide wide world of stupidity that parades itself before our disbelieving eyes every day." - TBogg, http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/05/breathless-stupidity-enormous-gaps-in.html - "I was surprised to learn that 19 states still have various kinds of overly-restrictive liquor laws. It's like we're all afraid we'll wind up living in a Very Special Episode of Blossom." - IndyLib, http://pandagon.net/2006/09/14/the-downside-is-elusive-to-me/#comment-193719 - If dumb Congress members were the X-Men, [Katherine] Harris would be their Wolverine -- a mutant possessing fearsome skills, the product of a demented government experiment gone horribly wrong. - Radar Magazine, "America's 10 Dumbest Members of Congress" October 2006 (Katherine Harris, ranked as #1) - Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. - Unknown - My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment... The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. - Howard Zinn - Like a Moebius strip of bullshit. - tb on a particularly astounding case of circular reasoning http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/12/lowry_sells_out/index.php#041567 - These libertarians are like girls in an invaded country not waiting two weeks before they're dating soldiers from the occupying army. So for 12 years (if not longer), libertarians were right there by the GOP's side, defending Capitol Hill from tax increases, political reform or from Democrats ever taking power again. Well the Democrats did take power, so like a bunch of French whores badly needing their heads shaved, the libertarians are coming over to liberals saying, "see we're really meant to be together, buy me something". - beowulf http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/notes_from_the_.htm - despite my curmudgeonly pose, I love all my fellow creatures, especially when I'm on mescaline. - Roy Edroso, alicublog.blogspot.com 1/4/2007 - The problem is that his estimation of the profundity of his opinions greatly outweighs their actual value. - Tin Foil Hat, commenting about Chris Matthews http://wonkette.com/politics/tim-russert/tim-russert-hates-louder-crazier-version-of-self-233133.php#c917428 - I find that I am often making the argument that Bush policy is "stupid" in one context or another. The thing is, this is not a persuasive argument among stupid people. - Bruce Wilder, 2/22/2007 http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/hell_no_we_shou.html - I will only say, by way of a hint, that there were fewer cable stations, PR firms, and Republicans 20 years ago than there are now. - roy edroso, alicublog.blogspot.com 3/9/2007 - Most murder victims are killed by friends, acquaintances, or family. Avoid people from those three groups, and your risk of being murdered is reduced by three quarters. - john Emerson, 3/29/2007 - Aggies are widely mocked for being loud-mouthed, obnoxious, bullheaded, thoughtless right-wingers. By _Texans_. - Matt Weiner, 3/30/2007, http://www.haloscan.com/comments/edroso/5716803265500543614/#172138 - ... almost Bushian in its ability to combine pedantic smugness with a near-total misapprehension of reality. - Fred Clark on a particularly bad piece of writing http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/04/lb_why_doctors_.html - "...economics runs around trying to figure out how people rationalized what they just did." - Stirling Newberry - Ah, the '80s. They gave us so much: Reagan, crack, AIDS, cocaine, Huey Lewis -- the list goes on. - Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2175 - Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate on the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or in the future; we are continually expecting the coming of some special moment when our life will unfold itself in its full significance. And we do not notice that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious sand from a loosely fastened bag. -Fr. Alexander Elchaninov - Suggesting that Moby and Tina Fey are hip and cutting-edge in 2008 really does cross over merely being clueless and into what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil." -James Gary on David Brooks http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/comic_sociology.php#comment-2242233 -