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Varley's quotes du jour |
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7/3/09 The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. |
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7/2/09 The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. |
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7/1/09 Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. |
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6/30/09 There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. |
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6/29/09 American popular culture's triumphant appeal around the world is the product of several forces: First among them is this country's historic aversion to assigning distinct values to high and low culture. Some would say the result has been a pervasive Philistinism -- that, as Oscar Wilde put it, "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." |
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6/28/09 A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. |
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6/27/09 If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles. |
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6/26/09 In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. |
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6/25/09 All politicians should have 3 hats -- one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected. |
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6/24/09 I only take Viagra when I'm with more than one woman. |
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6/23/09 “I read a book that figured that part about the virgins [in the Koran] is a mistranslation. The word is ambiguous. It comes in a passage full of food imagery. Milk and honey. It probably means raisins. Plump, and possibly candied or sugared.” “They kill themselves for raisins?” “I’d love to see their faces.” |
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6/22/09 Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. |
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6/21/09 I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. |
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6/20/09 I felt the urge to direct because I couldn't stomach what was being done with what I wrote. |
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6/19/09 Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. |
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6/18/09 Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren’t enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels. |
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6/17/09 As you know, pidgins are a real mixture of this, that, and the other thing. You get a bit of English, a bit of German, a bit of Dutch—everything. And the grammar is simple in the extreme. Do you know that when Prince Charles went to address the Papua New Guinea legislative assembly—where the official language is pidgin—they introduced him formally as “Nambawan pikinini bilong Mrs. Kwin”? [Number one child who belongs to the Queen.] |
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6/16/09 Now, as she sat in the coffee room, waiting for James to come down from his office upstairs, she looked up at the Bellamy portraits on the wall above her table. Sean Connery looked out of one of them rather forbiddingly, but then he was perhaps a touch disapproving, which was why people in Scotland were so proud of him. Scots heroes were not meant to be benign in their outlook; they needed to be at least a little bit cross about something, preferably an injustice committed against them, individually or nationally, some time ago. Sean Connery certainly looked rather cross about something. Perhaps he was cross at having his portrait painted, in the way in which such people often look cross at having their photographs taken. Perhaps, thought Domenica, there were paparazzi portraitists, who lurked with their easels outside hotels and fashionable nightclubs and painted quick likenesses of well-known people as they left the building—absurd thought. |
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6/15/09 Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you start criticizing him, you’re a mile away and he’s got to run after you in his socks. |
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6/14/09 A lot of sacred texts are mistranslated. Especially where virgins are concerned. Even the New Testament, probably. Some people say Mary was a first-time mother, that’s all. From the Hebrew word. Not a virgin. The original writers would laugh, seeing what we’ve made of it all. |
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6/13/09 Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up. |
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6/12/09 The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. |
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6/11/09 I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic. |
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6/10/09 We gave up some of our country to the white men, thinking that then we could have peace. We were mistaken. The white man would not let us alone. |
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6/9/09 I love playing bitches. There's a lot of bitch in every woman - a lot in every man. |
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6/8/09 He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. |
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6/7/09 You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. |
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6/6/09 I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle. |
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6/5/09 The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. |
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6/4/09 Advertising is legalized lying. |
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6/3/09 Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies. |
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6/2/09 There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever. |
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6/1/09 Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day. |
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5/31/09 On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it. |
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5/30/09 Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument. |
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5/29/09 You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. |
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5/28/09 Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. |
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5/27/09 I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid. |
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5/26/09 Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. |
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5/25/09 First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down. |
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5/24/09 What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? |
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5/23/09 These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig. |
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5/22/09 I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it. |
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5/21/09 I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they're the first to be rescued off sinking ships. |
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5/20/09 Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke. |
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5//19/09 All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take. |
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5/18/09 I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own. |
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5/17/09 Folks, there is a lot that isn't known yet about this swine flu, but there is one thing that we do know: the process that brought us the new flu is called evolution. It's not rocket science, but it is science. A virus is Darwinian behavior we can see in real time. We can see that it jumps on a host, procreates until the host is exhausted and then jumps on something new. Like Mel Gibson. |
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5/16/09 Cheney’s numskull ideas — he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans — are not only fixed, they’re jejune. He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable. |
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5/15/09 The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up. The man who wouldn’t list his office in the federal jobs directory, who had the vice president’s residence blocked on Google Earth, who went to the Supreme Court to keep from revealing which energy executives helped him write the nation’s energy policy, is now endlessly yelping about how President Obama is holding back documents that should be made public. Cheney, who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam) than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country. |
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5/14/09 It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders. |
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5/13/09 I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes. |
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5/12/09 A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once. |
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5/11/09 At one point, Republicans put forth a coherent, idealistic vision of America, one that summoned it to greatness. There was a profound belief in the dignity of the individual, a reverence for the Constitution and the founders who proposed it, a belief in doing whatever it took (including spending tax dollars to build a military second to none) to preserve the peace. Republican platforms preached prudence and the virtues of small business. Today, the Republican belief system has degenerated into an embarrassing hodgepodge that worships political victory more than ideas; supports massive deficits; plunges the nation into "just-in-case" wars without adequate troops, supplies or armor; dismisses constitutional strictures; and campaigns on a platform of turning national problem-solving over to "Joe the Plumber." It's hard to see how all that points the way to a reawakening of voters to trust in the GOP. |
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5/10/09 Creationism and Darwinism are not "opposing but equally legitimate theories" to be treated as such. This flu virus didn't make the leap from pigs to humans because God felt like fucking with Mexicans. It happened because, like I said, viruses adapt to survive. Just like all other organisms on Planet Earth. With the possible exception of the Republican National Committee. |
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5/9/09 Viruses are like the free market. You adapt to survive or you die. I mean, except for Citibank and AIG and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Bear Stearns... Okay, bad example. They're nothing like the free market. |
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5/8/09 If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words. |
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5/7/09 Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance. |
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5/6/09 Rich people march on Washington every day. |
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5/5/09 I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs. Nixon, but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back. |
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5/4/09 The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great. |
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5/3/09 The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible. |
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5/2/09 With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60. |
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5/1/09 Those who speak for what is left of the Republican Party diminish their ranks every time they do. On [Karl] Rove’s advice, they killed stimulus money for fighting pandemics like swine flu. They still follow the post-bunker missives of Dick Cheney, who has as much credibility on competent governing as the Octomom has on birth control. And now there is the exquisite irony that nearly half the Republicans in the only big state left in the Party of Lincoln – Texas – say they favor seceding from the Union. So much for America first. |
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4/30/09 Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law. And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes. Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party? |
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4/29/09 If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. |
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4/28/09 The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence. |
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4/27/09 That's what you [Republican Party] are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will. But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy. The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib. |
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4/26/09 Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met. |
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4/25/09 Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to. |
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4/24/09 If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of “The Elements of Style.” The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. |
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4/23/09 If the defendant [the government torturer] acted knowing that severe pain or suffering was reasonably likely to result from his actions, but no more, he would have acted with only general intent but not specific intent to cause pain. As a theoretical matter therefore, knowledge alone that a particular result is certain to occur does not constitute specific intent. Furthermore, a showing that an individual acted with a good faith belief that his conduct would not produce a result that the law prohibits negates specific intent. 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Judge Jay Bybee What the fuck ...? John Varley |
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4/22/09 Giving away one thing to sell another is what they call a “razor blade business”—companies like Gillette gives you free razor blade handles and then stiff you by charging you a small fortune for the blades. Printer cartridges are the worst for that—the most expensive champagne in the world is cheap when compared with inkjet ink, which costs all of a penny a gallon to make wholesale. |
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4/21/09 The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none. |
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4/20/09 When you read Ann Coulter, you know you’re reading someone who would fuck a hippopotamus if she thought it would boost her Q rating. That’s a rare quality and it commands one’s attention. |
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4/19/09 Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. |
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4/18/09 Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don't want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work. |
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4/17/09 You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself. |
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4/16/09 Sometimes it's not easy to admit that you live in Florida. Last week, our state Senate boldly took the first step toward making it illegal for a person to have intimate relations with an animal. Although such a law might thin the dating pool in certain counties, it should ultimately serve to protect household pets and domestic livestock, which evidently are at far greater risk than most of us had imagined. |
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4/15/09 People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They're not afraid of them. It's one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it. |
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4/14/09 Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. |
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4/13/09 You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. |
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4/12/09 I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars. |
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4/11/09 I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. |
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4/10/09 If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity. |
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4/9/09 When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. |
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4/8/09 If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones. |
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4/7/09 The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? |
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4/6/09 Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine. |
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4/5/09 Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place. |
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4/4/09 In my country we go to prison first and then become President. |
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4/3/09 Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. |
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4/2/09 Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life. |
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4/1/09 I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast. |
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3/31/09 If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone. |
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3/30/09 I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. |
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3/29/09 I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion. |
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3/28/09 In mainstream Spanish bichos means insects, but in Puerto Rico it means testicles, so when a pesticide maker promised to bring death to the bichos, Puerto Rican consumers were at least bemused, if not alarmed. Much the same happened when a maker of bread referred to its product as un bollo de pan and discovered that to Spanish-speaking Miamians of Cuban extraction that means a woman’s private parts. And when Perdue Chickens translated its slogan “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” into Spanish, it came out as the slightly less macho “It takes a sexually excited man to make a chicken sensual.” Never mind. Sales soared. |
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3/27/09 You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created. |
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3/26/09 “What is your name?” asked Lear. “Caius,” said Kent. “And whence do you hail?” “From Bonking, Sire.” “Well, yes, lad, as do we all,” said Lear, “but from what town?” “Bonking Ewe on Worms Head,” I offered with a shrug. “Wales …” |
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3/25/09 I’m not the superstitious type, which is why I don’t like superstitious people. They’re bad luck. |
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3/24/09 New FOIA requests will enjoy "a clear presumption" that "in the face of doubt, openness prevails." Investigative journalists will now be able to use FOIA to uncover Bush Administration officials' nefarious deeds, forcing Obama's Justice Department to prosecute. Should they waterboard Rumsfeld? Only if it's on pay-per-view. |
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3/23/09 He’s always asking: "Is that new? I haven’t seen that before." It’s like, Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet. Michelle Obama |
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3/22/09 Did you know, in Portugal they canonize a saint by actually shooting him out of a cannon? |
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3/21/09 She looked around the bar. It was a long, narrow room, decorated in the obligatory Danish minimalist style, which meant that there was no furniture. She had always thought that minimalism should have been the cheapest style available, because it involved nothing, but in fact it was the most expensive. The empty spaces in Danish minimalism were what cost the money. |
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3/20/09 “Come in, nuncle. Take some shelter under a shrub, if only to take the sting out of the rain.” “I need no shelter. Let nature take her naked revenge.” “Fine, then,” said I. “Then you won’t be needing this.” I took the old man’s heavy fur cape, tossing him my sodden woolen cloak, and retreated to my shrubbery and the relative shelter of the animal skin. “Hey?” said Lear, bewildered. “Go on,” said I. “Crack the sky, fry your old head, mash your balls, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll prompt you if you lose your place.” And off he went again: “Mighty Thor, send your thunderbolts to cease this weary heart! “Neptune’s waves, beat these limbs from their joints! “Hecate’s claws, tear my liver and sup upon my soul! “Baal, blast my bowels from their unhealthy home! “Jupiter, strew the land with my shredded muscle!” The old man stopped his tirade for a moment and the madness went out of his eyes. He looked to me. “It’s really fucking cold out here.” “Like being struck by a bolt of the bloody obvious on the road to Damascus, innit, nuncle?” |
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3/19/09 Clarke’s Laws: 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Sir Arthur C Clarke |
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3/18/09 Most people don’t understand psychopathy very well. They think of the psychopath as the Hitchcockian villain—staring eyes and all the rest—whereas they’re really rather mundane people, and there are rather more of them than we would imagine. Do you know anybody who’s consistently selfish? Do you know anybody who doesn’t seem troubled if he upsets somebody else—who’ll use other people? Cold inside? Do you know anybody like that? … Then it’s possible that that person is a psychopath. |
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3/17/09 Admit that nothing worthwhile comes from conservatism. It's abject selfishness masquerading as a valid ideology. Its sole purpose is to perpetuate minority privilege attained through illegitimate power wielded against consequently suffering masses. Conservatives will never utter the word "justice," for it's a shattering indictment of their consistently exploitative role in human affairs. Everything good has been fiercely resisted by the political Right: abolishing slavery and child labor, gaining women's suffrage, struggling to achieve racial equality, raising the minimum wage, implementing progressive taxation, establishing health and safety standards in the workplace and the community at large, just to name a few. |
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3/16/09 “Oh, it will be worth it, I assure you.” Her pretty eyes widened, and she lowered her voice. “It’s not definite yet, but I have it on good authority that the vice president is scheduled to attend.” “Really? The vice president?” Pause. “Do you have a fork, by any chance?” “A fork?” “Yeah, because I’d sooner stick a fork in my eye than go to an event that the vice president is scheduled to attend.” |
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3/15/09 “Pocket, you have traveled the land. Tell me what it is like to be a peasant.” “Well, Milady, I have never been a peasant, strictly speaking, but for the most part, I’m told it’s wake early, work hard, suffer hunger, catch the plague, and die. Then get up the next morning and do it all again.” “Every day?” “Well, if you’re a Christian—on Sunday you get up early, go to church, suffer hunger until you have a big meal of barley and swill, then catch the plague and die.” “Hunger? Is that why they seem so wretched and unhappy?” “That would be one of the reasons. But there’s much to be said for hard work, disease, run-of-the-mill suffering, and the odd witch burning or virgin sacrifice, depending on your faith.” “If they’re hungry, why don’t they just eat something?” |
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3/14/09 Stephen King’s 10 favorite adaptations of his own works. In alphabetical order:
Apt Pupil |
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3/13/09 Kyle, my boy, look at it this way. Our biggest client is BXL, the seventh-largest company in the world, sales last year of $200 billion. Very smart businessmen who have a budget for everything. They live by budgets. They are fanatics about budgets. Last year their budget for legal fees was one percent of their total sales, or about $2 billion. We didn't get all of that because they use twenty different law firms around the world, but we got our share. Guess what happens if they don't spend the amount they budget, if their legal fees fall short? Their in-house lawyers monitor our billings, and if our numbers are low, they call up and raise hell. What are we, the lawyers, doing wrong? Aren't we properly protecting them? The point is, they expect to spend the money. If we don't take it, then it screws up their budgets, they get worried, and maybe they start looking around for another firm, one that will work harder at billing them. You follow? |
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3/12/09 Have the Republicans reverted to a party with so little to say that they are reduced to making feeble jabs at Michelle Obama's biceps? Are they so afraid of the new Obama era that the First Lady's arms are a enough of a symbol of power that they cower before them? That can be the only explanation for Republican lite David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, to tell his fellow Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Michelle Obama should put away her arms, "Thunder and Lightning." Thunder and lightning? Has he actually named the biceps that offend him? Brooks also had the nerve to say that "sometimes I think half the reason Obama ran for president is so Michelle would have a platform to show off her biceps." If that doesn't sound like a sore loser running scared, then I don't know what does. |
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3/11/09 When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane." |
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3/10/09 I wanted to convey the sort of surface resentment the English seem to have for the French, and to be fair, the French for the English. As one English friend explained to me, “Oh yes, we hate the French, but we don’t want anyone else to hate them. They are ours. We will fight to the death to preserve them so we can continue to hate them.” I don’t care if that’s true or not, I thought it was funny. Or as one French acquaintance put it, “All Englishmen are gay; some simply don’t know it and sleep with women.” I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but I thought it was funny. The fucking French are great, aren’t they? |
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3/9/09 From Fool (The true story of King Lear as told by Pocket, the Fool.) PART TWO: Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own Pope—Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on. If the Dutch pope would give you a hundred years out of purgatory for a shilling and a ferryman’s ticket, the Discount Pope would let you out for two hundred years and send you home with the femur of a minor saint and a splinter of the True Cross. The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless-nun night for midnight mass. It came to a head, though, when St. Matthew appeared in a vision to the Retail Pope, telling him that the faithful were more interested in the quality of their religious experience, not just the quantity. Thus inspired, the Retail Pope moved Christmas to June when the weather wasn’t so shit for shopping, and the Discount Pope, not realizing the game had changed, responded by forgiving hell altogether for anyone who gave a priest a hand job. Without hell, there was no fear, and without fear, there was no further need for the Church to supply redemption, and more important, no means for the Church to modify behavior. The Discount faithful defected in droves, either to the Retail branch of the Church, or to a dozen different pagan sects. Why not get pissed and dance naked around a pole all Sabbath if the worst of it was a rash on the naughty bits and the dropping of the odd bastard now and then? Pope Boldface was burned in a wicker man the next Beltane and cats shat on his ashes. |
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3/8/09 For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring. |
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3/7/09 The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. |
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3/6/09 I felt pretty comfortable with Westerns, apart from the fact I couldn't ride. |
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3/5/09 These banks are hurting. I opened a new account, and the lady asked me for a toaster. |
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3/4/09 Did you hear this? Disney is laying off employees at their theme parks. All 101 Dalmatians are missing, and they're now serving something called Korean barbecue. |
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3/3/09 The Obama administration, says Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, believes “that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go.” So do we all. But what we have now isn’t private enterprise, it’s lemon socialism: banks get the upside but taxpayers bear the risks. And it’s perpetuating zombie banks, blocking economic recovery. |
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3/2/09 But since I moved to L.A., I've discovered that liberals hate science just as much as conservatives, and they talk about it a lot more. Liberals have an irrational fear of inoculation and genetically engineered food, no matter how conclusive the science is on these topics. They believe that the body needs to be detoxified with foot pads, colonics, mud wraps and maple-syrup-and-cayenne-pepper fasts. They take echinacea and Emergen-C, heal themselves with crystals and magnets, and believe that energy flows through different "centers" of their bodies. They practice, I swear, a form of healing massage called reiki in which the masseuse usually doesn't even touch you. I believe my wife and I have a reiki marriage. |
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3/1/09 From Fool (The true story of King Lear as told by Pocket, the Fool.) PART ONE: I juggled apples and sang a little song about monkeys. I said, “Two popes are shagging a camel behind a mosque, when this Saracen comes up—” “There is only one, true pope!” shouted Cornwall, great tower of malignant smegma that he is. “It’s a jest, you wanker,” said I. “Suspend fucking disbelief for a bit, would you?” He was right, in a way (although not for the purpose of the camel bit). For the last year there had been only one pope, in the holy city of Amsterdam. But for the prior fifty years there had been two popes, the Retail Pope and the Discount Pope. After the Thirteenth Holy Crusade, when it was decided that to avoid future strife, the birthplace of Jesus would be moved to a different city every four years, holy shrines lost their geographical importance. There arose a great price war in the Church, with shrines offering pilgrims dispensation at varying competitive rates. Now there didn’t need to be a miracle declared on the spot; anywhere could basically be declared a holy spot, and often was. Lourdes could still dispensation coupons with the healing waters—but some bloke in Puddinghoe could plant some pansies and hawk, “Jesus had a wee right on this very spot when he was a lad—two pennies and a spliff of Cardiff Chronic’ll get you out o’ Purgatory for an eon, mate.” (CONTINUED NEXT SUNDAY) |
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2/28/09 I once had a reviewer take me to task for writing awkward prose, and the passage he cited was one of my characters quoting Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience.” You don’t get many moments in life; pointing that out to the reviewer was one of mine. |
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2/27/09 “Well, If you can’t be persuaded, let us have a consult,” said Rosemary. “Parsley, Sage? A moment?” She waved the other witches over to an old oak where they whispered. “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary?” said Kent. “What, no Thyme?” Rosemary wheeled on him. “Oh, we’ve got the time if you’ve got the inclination, handsome.” |
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2/26/09 And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does Bobby Jindal really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens. The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead. |
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2/25/09 What we want is a system in which banks own the downs as well as the ups. And the road to that system runs through nationalization. |
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2/24/09 Some of our nation's largest banks have been described this week as dead men walking. The New York Times says they are insolvent, and here's the thing: Nobody will say the names of the banks, because if you say the names, their stock will tank even worse. But here's a hint. One of them rhymes with Shittibank, and one of them rhymes with Skank of America. |
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2/23/09 I'm a little nervous. I've been doing a show now since 1993 with "Politically Incorrect." We moved over here to HBO with "Real Time" in 2003, and in all that time I've never done a show where the president wasn't either a horny hillbilly or an illiterate dumbass. It hasn't sunk in yet that Obama is president. I'm still writing "Fuck George Bush" on my checks. He's been in office for a month and he's signed the stimulus package, he's closing Guantanamo Bay, ordered the planning of our withdrawing from Iraq ... it's like he's spraying the country with a giant can of Bush-Be-Gone. |
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2/22/09 Revolutionaries are not easy people. The fierce purpose that drives men to take on causes that frighten others does not admit of flexibility. |
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2/21/09 I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain. |
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2/20/09 When you look at the state of the world economy, indeed in how much we have lost in just four months, the fact is we can't afford to wait four years to fix things. If the Obama stimulus fails, if the economy keeps slipping, millions of Americans who are teetering now will fall off the economic cliff. If we don't get it right this time, we have to keep trying and trying. We can't wait till 2013 for a Republican to ride into town touting tax cuts -- what else? -- as the solution. So whether he realizes it or not, when Limbaugh says he hopes Obama fails, he is hoping for an economic disaster of near-apocalyptic proportions. In my book, that makes him a traitor to the American people, at least those who aren't in the top 1 percent. |
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2/19/09 If Republican politicians are so deeply opposed to President Obama's economic recovery plan, they should refuse to take the money. After all, if you think all that federal spending is damaging, there are easy ways to reduce it: Don't take federal money. |
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2/18/09 We've become vulnerable everywhere there's oil. The Venezuelans hate us. The Gulf of Mexico is subject to hurricanes. Aside from our disaster in Iraq, the Middle East is shadowed by bin Laden, Sunni-Shiite rivalries, and the threat of a nuclear Iran empowering terrorists. And we've got no real program to wean us from foreign oil. We've become the equivalent of a crack-addicted whore, ready to turn tricks for anyone who can give us a fix. |
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2/16/09 Hollywood... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production. |
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2/15/09 Hoods are good parts because they're always flashy and attract attention. If you've got any ability, you can use that as a stepping stone. |
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2/14/09 Hollywood will accept actresses playing ten years older, but actors can play ten years younger. |
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2/13/09 I remember just lying in the grass, staring at the clouds, wondering where they drifted off to after they floated over Texas. I never would have imagined that one day I would follow one of those clouds and find myself in Hollywood. |
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2/12/09 In my mind, I've always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y'all just didn't know yet. |
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2/11/09 After all, what's the moral distinction between welfare recipients and the wizards of Wall Street, other than that the welfare recipients aren't the ones responsible for tanking the global economy? |
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2/10/09 I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me. |
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2/9/09 I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting. |
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2/8/09 The heavies in my day were kid's stuff compared to today. Our villains had no redeeming qualities. But there's a new morality today. A villain is a guy with a frailty. Heroes are villains. |
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2/7/09 Working in Hollywood does give one a certain expertise in the field of prostitution. |
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2/6/09 Here in Hollywood you can actually get a marriage license printed on an Etch-A-Sketch. |
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2/5/09 Hollywood amuses me. Holier-than-thou for the public and unholier-than-the-devil in reality. |
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2/4/09 Agents are like tires on a car; in order to get anywhere at all, you need at least four of them, and they need to be rotated every 5,000 miles. |
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2/3/09 It's good to experience Hollywood in short bursts, I guess. Little snippets. I don't think I can handle being here all the time, it's pretty nutty. |
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2/2/09 The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. |
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2/1/09 I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. How is it possible to have a civil war? Not George Carlin |
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1/31/09 The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood. |
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1/30/09 Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton. |
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1/29/09 It's tough when take 1 is technically okay and take 2 has better acting. Out here (Hollywood) they print the first one. That's the one where we all hit the mark on the floor and who cares about the acting. |
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1/28/09 At the turn of the century Berlin had the most extensive streetcar network in Europe; but in America it would have come only twenty-second. By 1922, the peak year, the United States had over fourteen thousand miles of streetcar track. The biggest system in the country was, you may be surprised to hear, that of Los Angeles. |
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1/27/09 The development of credit card gas pumps, microwaves, and express motels has eliminated the necessity for human contact along the interstates. It is now possible to drive coast to coast without speaking to a human being at all; you just slide your card, pump your gas, buy a couple of Hershey bars, perhaps heat up a burrito, and put the pedal back to the metal. |
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1/26/09 Ty Inc., the makers of Beanie Babies, have created two dolls named Sasha and Malia, and they're pretending that it was all just some giant coincidence. This excerpt from the Associated Press news article: "The Oak Brook-based company chose the names because 'they are beautiful names,' not because of any resemblance to Malia and Sasha Obama, said spokeswoman Tania Lundeen." "'There's nothing on the dolls that refers to the Obama girls,' Lundeen said. 'It would not be fair to say they are exact replications of these girls. They are not.'" That is such a bunch of crap I don't even know where to start. Seriously, the Iraqi Minister of Information thinks you went too far with that argument. It would be like me selling a line of T-shirts that say "Beanie Babies make me vomit," and then acting like it was a huge coincidence. Peter Hartlaub, The Poop, the Chronicle Baby Blog |
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1/25/09 Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen. Say amen. And amen. |
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1/24/09 We all know the Pogo line about how "we have met the enemy, and he is us." Obama implicitly seemed to embrace it. We have been an immature country; we want things that are in conflict. We favor lower taxes and more services; we want balanced budgets and more spending on entitlements. We want progress, so long as it doesn't threaten the status quo. |
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1/23/09 It is well past time to ask the question: What has Barack Obama really accomplished as president, anyway? I mean, the inaugural speech was nice, the big crowds behaved themselves, the first couple danced at 10 balls and Michelle's dresses are getting pretty good reviews. But the economy is still in the deep freeze, we've still got troops in Iraq and global warming continues apace. How long are we supposed to wait for the change we've been waiting for? |
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1/22/09 In the main the great travelers, male or female, tend to be obsessed people; only obsession would get them across the distances they cross, or carry them through the hardships they face in the deserts, in the jungles, on the ice. They seldom attain and perhaps could not really afford wisdom, since wisdom, in most cases, would have kept them from ever setting out. |
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1/21/09 Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker? If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked? Not George Carlin |
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1/20/09 I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. |
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1/19/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: We will hold the memory of you high, and behold you, and say, "Never, never, never again." We have tasted the soot and smelled the blood on the wind; we have seen how fragile our way of government is when placed in the hands of low men such as you, and because of that, you will be remembered for all time. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/18/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: You came into office looking to make your friends richer, and to fulfill as best you could your most overriding personal belief: that government is the problem, so government must be damaged and denuded to the point of impotence. Through your tax cuts and your two vastly expensive boondoggle wars, you made your friends rich. By unleashing Mr. Cheney and your other minions, you tore the Constitution to shreds and tatters. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/17/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: You championed the economic policies and deregulation fantasies that have left the financial stability of millions in ashes. You used the threat of terrorism against your own people in order to give yourself political cover. You killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who did you nor us no harm. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/16/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: You outed a deep-cover CIA agent who was running a network designed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, and you did so because her ambassador husband told the truth about you in the public prints. You turned us all into torturers and butchers in the eyes of the world with your decision to use Abu Ghraib prison the same way Saddam Hussein once did. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/15/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: You defied lawfully issued subpoenas and potentially set a precedent that could shatter the separation of powers. You told the American people Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al-Qaeda connections and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program, even though all of that was a lie. You made a joking video about not being able to find any of it. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/14/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: You wanted hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from other areas of the federal budget and into your war in Iraq. You took more than $70 billion out of the budget used by the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana to fund the repair and maintenance of the New Orleans levee system. Katrina struck not long after you took that money and poured it into the sand, and the levees failed for lack of funded upkeep. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/13/09 Greetings, Mr. Bush: Less than a month after those Towers came down, a reporter asked what you thought we should do. "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer," you replied, "by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." I happened to be watching television and heard you say that live into a camera. The only reason I didn't throw up on myself is because my teeth were clenched too tightly for the vomit to pass my lips. You'd like people to remember you standing on that pile of rubble in Manhattan, you with the bullhorn and the heroic pose. I, however, will always remember you pitching tax cuts to a devastated nation while a pall of poison smoke still hung in the air over Ground Zero. William Rivers Pitt |
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1/12/09 Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest. |
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1/11/09 I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too. |
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1/10/09 For hurling his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush last month, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi faces a possible jail sentence of seven to 15 years, depending on the precise charge pressed against him. For initiating a war that to date has cost the lives of 4,000 U.S. soldiers and anywhere from 100,000 to a million Iraqi civilians, Bush faces a retirement package that includes a generous pension, staff, office and enough secret service protection to ward off any future footwear attacks. |
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1/9/09 George W. Bush was far more than simply the worst or least popular president of modern times. He was a man who, with great success, weakened the connection between action and consequence. He might escape the threat of imprisonment, much as he dodged those shoes last month, but in the pages of history he must nevertheless be held to full account for the damage he has done. |
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1/8/09 Here “I lost my land” is changed; a cell is split, and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—“We lost our land.” The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first “we” there grows a still more dangerous thing: “I have a little food” plus “I have none.” If from this problem the sum is “We have a little food,” the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. |
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1/7/09 Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people. |
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1/6/09 And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property is accumulated in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. |
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1/5/09 Fella tol’ me what happened in Akron, Ohio. Rubber companies. They got mountain people in cause they’d work cheap. An’ these here mountain people up and joined the union. Well, sir, hell jus’ popped. And them storekeepers and legioners an’ people like that, they get drillin’ and yellin’, “Red!” An’ they’re gonna run the union right outta Akron. Preachers git a-preachin’ about it, an’ papers a-yowlin, an’ they’s pick handles put out by the rubber companies, an’ they’re a-buyin’ gas. Jesus, you’d think them mountain boys was reg’lar devils! Well, sir, it was las’ March, an’ one Sunday five thousan’ of them mountain men had a turkey shoot outside a town. Five thousan’ of ‘em jes’ marched through town with their rifles. An’ they had their turkey shoot, an’ then they marched back. An’ that’s all they done. Well, sir, they ain’t been no trouble sence then. These here citizens committees give back the pick handles, an’ the storekeepers keep their stores, an’ nobody been clubbed nor tarred an’ feathered, and nobody been killed. |
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1/4/09 Here’s me preachin’ grace. An’ here’s them people getting’ grace so hard they’re jumpin’ and shoutin’. Now they say laying with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass. An’ I got to thinkin’ how in hell, s’cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it’s spoutin’ out of her nose an’ ears. You’d think that’d be the one time when the devil didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. But there it was. |
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1/3/09 The card was pale yellow, with maroon letters centered, reading TERRY MULCANY Journalist laureled with phone, fax and cell numbers, plus an email address. There was no terrestrial address. |
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1/2/09 An Ma ain’t nobody you can push around, neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time ‘cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han’, an’ the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an’ she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn’ even eat that chicken when she got done. There wasn’t nothin’ but a pair of legs in her han’. Grampa throwed his hip out of joint laughin’. |
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1/1/09 New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. |
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12/31/08 A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. Anonymous |
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12/30/08 The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories often feature miracles. Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see. |
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12/29/08 Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. |
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12/28/08 New Year's Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive. |
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12/27/08 Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle. |
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12/26/08 I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since, because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system. Also dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second. |
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12/25/08 Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer...? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' upon his lips should be boiled with his won pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!" |
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12/24/08 Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven. |
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12/23/08 In the summer of 2005 I returned to golf after a much needed layoff of thirty-two years. Attempting a comeback in my fifties wouldn’t have been so absurd if I’d been a decent player when I was young, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. At my best, I’d shown occasional flashes of competence. At my worst, I’d been a menace to all carbon-based life-forms on the course. |
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12/22/08 George Bernard Shaw once made a famous remark to Sam Goldwyn. “The trouble, Mr. Goldwyn,” Shaw said, “is that you are only interested in art and I’m only interested in money.” I can endorse that sentiment. Writers in Hollywood are perfectly free to pursue their art, if they want to; they just aren’t free to pursue it in movies, which, properly speaking, aren’t their art anyway. If they think they’re going to achieve much art by writing screenplays, they’re barking up the wrong tree, and the louder they bark, the more likely they are to annoy the orchard keepers. |
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12/21/08 As long as there’s faith, people will be willing to die for it. And whenever people of faith have power, they’ll kill for it. All you can do is try to balance it with sanity and humanity. And the way you do that is by understanding that a religious war is like killing someone over who has the better imaginary friend. |
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12/20/08 The secret to life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. |
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12/19/08 In an era of faceless organizations owned by other equally faceless organizations, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner's name is on the door. Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark. Statement at Bernard Madoff website |
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12/18/08 He that lives upon hope, dies farting. |
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12/17/08 Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant? Not George Carlin |
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12/16/08 Buddy did care about Courtroom Six. It was his class act—“class” being a somewhat relative term, considering his other [television] shows: Jumpers, a reality show based on security camera footage of people who jump off bridges; G.O. (the medical abbreviation for “grotesquely obese”); and now a show called Yeehad, a “comedy” about five patriotic southwesterners who decide to travel to Mecca to blow up Islam’s most sacred shrine, the Q’aaba. |
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12/15/08 Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner. |
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12/14/08 If God is who we are told He is, the world would have to be a different place. If the world is the way it is, and there is a God, He must be either indifferent, so indifferent as to mean almost nothing, or perverse and evil. Or, we have got it all wrong, and we mistake good for evil and evil for good. For if we were to act as God does, to model ourselves on Him, then we would be indifferent to suffering and injustice, we would make the innocent suffer for the sins of the guilty, and we would slaughter without mercy. |
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12/13/08 There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but curable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can't lay a finger on her because in the first place you don't want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Keirkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. |
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12/12/08 "There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks," Ohls said. "Maybe the head man thinks his hands are clean but somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut from under them and had to sell out for nickels, decent people lost their jobs, stocks got rigged on the market, proxies got bought up like a pennyweight of old gold, and the five per centers and the big law firms got paid hundred-grand fees for beating some law the people wanted but the rich guys didn't, on account of it cut into their profits. Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. Maybe it's the best we can get, but it still ain't any Ivory Soap deal." |
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12/11/08 I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself. |
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12/10/08 I might even have got rich—small town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city. |
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12/9/08 At three A.M. I was walking the floor and listening to Khachaturyan working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it. |
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12/8/08 I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. |
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12/7/08 Spot who is attacking us. Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime, actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever submit. Make it rough, rough on the attackers all the way. |
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12/6/08 I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. |
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12/5/08 Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is. |
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12/4/08 My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres. |
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12/3/08 It's a miserable life in Hollywood. You're up at five or six o'clock in the morning to be ready to start shooting at nine. |
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12/2/08 Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood. |
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12/1/08 I've seen it too many times in Hollywood. Talking about a relationship in public can jinx it. And if you have your picture taken together, you might as well start packing your bags. |
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11/30/08 In Hollywood we acquire the finest novels in order to smell the leather bindings. |
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11/29/08 I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience. |
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11/28/08 People who allow their lives to be determined by convenience are not the sort of people who flourish in L.A. The city is a lot of things, but it’s never convenient—except, perhaps, for its eccentrics, one of whom was a little old man who used to drive up and down Santa Monica Boulevard in a car shaped like a yellow shoe. He was a cobbler—it probably felt normal to be driving to work in his shoe car; but for the rest of us, it was a sight to see. |
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11/27/08 I love Thanksgiving turkey... it's the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts. |
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11/26/08 In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing. |
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11/25/08 Do not think that brashness and the moment's limelight can supplant years spent making an artist. That is why Picasso remains a giant and Norman Rockwell can never be more than an enormously talented craftsman. Because Picasso could do what Rockwell did, but Rockwell was incapable of doing what Picasso did. |
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11/24/08 There is a special sea of boiling hyena vomit in the deepest and darkest level of Hell, tenanted thus far only by those who burned the Great Library of Alexandria, by the dolt who bowdlerized Lady Chatterly's Lover, and by those who have torn down elegant art deco buildings to erect mini-malls. It is my certain belief that Sid Sheinberg [who re-cut Terry Gilliam's Brazil] will sizzle there throughout eternity. Standing on Ted Turner's [who "colorized" The Maltese Falcon] shoulders. |
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11/23/08 In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination. |
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11/22/08 I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. Not George Carlin |
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11/21/08 You know, let's put it this way, if all the people in Hollywood who have had plastic surgery, if they went on vacation, there wouldn't be a person left in town. |
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11/20/08 As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people. |
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11/19/08 Hollywood is a place where the stars twinkle until they wrinkle. |
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11/18/08 Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon ended their active/negative presidencies by being run out of town when their public approval standing was so low they felt they could not govern. Bush has even lower approval ratings, but he is not going anywhere, because unlike Johnson and Nixon, who also thought they were right, yet worried about the greater good of the nation, Bush does not seem to care, so he will stay to the bitter end. After all, the perks are great. |
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11/17/08 I do not wish [Sarah Palin] ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska. May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance. But now, as the Brits say, “I’ll be glad to see the back of her.” |
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11/16/08 Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers. |
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11/15/08 When the naming [of towns] was left to unofficial sources, as with the towns that sprang up around the mining camps in California, the results were generally livelier. California briefly reveled in such arresting designations as Murderer’s Gulch, Guano Hill, Chucklehead Diggings, Delirium Tremens, Whiskey Diggings, You Bet, Chicken Thief Flat, Poker Flat, Git-Up-and-Git, Dead Mule, One Eye, Hell-out-for-Noon City, Puke, and Shitbritches Creek.… Often the more colorful of the names were later quietly changed for reasons that don’t always require elucidation, as with Two Tits, California, and Shit-House Mountain, Arizona. |
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11/14/08 It was in the seventies that swap meets really began to be popular in America; attics, closets, and garages throughout the country began to disgorge their contents onto tables in the parking lots of strip malls—usually older, dying strip malls. Swap meets now are much more professionalized, but they still yield amazing harvests of goods. Love ends, life ends, but the flow of objects goes on forever. |
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11/13/08 Punditariat: Collective term for the one/seventh of the population of Washington, DC, who opine on political matters on television. |
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11/12/08 Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy. Would a fly without wings be called a walk? Not George Carlin |
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11/11/08 In the Convention keynote speech that made him instantly famous four years ago, Obama called himself “a skinny kid with a funny name.” Funny? Not really. “Millard Fillmore”—now, that’s funny. The New York Times contented itself with referring to the candidate’s “unusual name.” Unusual? Unusual would be, say, “Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Ten weeks from now, the President of the United States will be a person whose first name is a Swahili word derived from the Arabic (it means “blessing”), whose middle name is that not only of a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad but also of the original target of an ongoing American war, and whose last name rhymes nicely with “Osama.” That’s not a name, it’s a catastrophe, at least in American politics. Or ought to have been. Yet Barack Obama won, and won big. Hendrick Hertzberg, in The New Yorker |
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11/10/08 Accurate prediction of the future, of its technologies and triumphs, has always seemed to me to be the least interesting thing about science fiction. So Arthur C. Clarke predicted the global satellite network—so what? He also predicted the widespread use of hovercrafts and the dominance by 2001 of the commercial Earth-Moon space trade by Pan-Am Airlines (d. 1991). |
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11/9/08 At the end of the evening, the electoral vote count was 349 for Obama, 148 for McCain. Or, as Fox News says, “too close to call.” During the concession speech, every time that McCain would mention Barack Obama, people booed, and finally, McCain could not ignore it any longer, and he had to stop the speech. He said, “All right, that’s enough, Hillary.” |
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11/08/08 Hunters should get their guns because a COON broke into the White House. Buck Burnette, University of Texas football player who was just kicked off the team
I went to high school with Buck. Didn't know him personally, but he has a reputation in the community as being a 'gentle giant.' If you had ever talked to him prior to this incident you'd be as shocked as I am to hear that he said what he did. Anonymous im black and went to high school with buck the so called "gentle giant" and at lunch time he used to shove me in garbage cans and say "they burnt the meat, throw it away". I lost many hours of sleep over this and im glad to see that justice is finally being served! Anonymous |
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11/7/08 Most people got their first glimpse of television at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The New York Times, with what was threatening to become a customary lack of prescience, forecast that it would never be a serious competitor for radio because “People must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American hasn’t time for it.” |
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11/6/08 Being in control of several hundred pounds of temperamental metal was a frightening challenge that proved too much for many. On her first attempt to drive, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, a wealthy socialite, switched on the engine and promptly ran over a servant who had been stationed nearby in case she required assistance. As the man struggled dazedly to his feet, Mrs. Fish threw the car into reverse and mowed him down again. Panicking, she changed gears and flattened him a third time. At this Mrs. Fish fled into the house and never went near a car again. How the servant subsequently accommodated himself to the automotive age is not recorded. |
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11/5/08 The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse. |
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11/4/08 The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. |
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11/3/08 [Obama] is not like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, who would have stopped at every black church in the country during the campaign. Obama will do none of that, and that's part of the secret of his success with the broader electorate. He wasn't raised “black.” He hardly mentioned affirmative action during the campaign. He didn't talk about all the black men in prison. In fact, he hardly brought up race at all. Those have been core issues for an entire generation of black leaders, and Obama's decision not to make them the focus of his campaign left a lot of the traditional black leaders on the sidelines. But remember, Jackie Robinson didn't get into the majors because he was black - he got there because he was a great ballplayer. Barack Obama won't get elected president because he is black - he'll get elected because he is a brilliant politician. |
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11/2/08 This is a little prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery? Not George Carlin |
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11/1/08 Soon-to-be-ex-Senator Dole, You should be ashamed of yourself. A true Christian would never have run that libelous ad implying that your opponent is godless. A Sunday school teacher! And you even faked her voice! Is there nothing you won't stoop to? I'll be glad to see you returned to your home on November 5, because you've shown yourself as too slimy even for the US Senate. May you rot in hell, listening to that ad for all eternity ... John Varley |
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10/31/08 Do you even understand this Bush economic plan? Here’s how it works: When you screw up, you pay. When they screw up, you pay. Very simple. More bad news from President Bush: Remember those rebates checks from a few months ago? He wants them back. Yeah. We need to give that money to rich people on Wall Street. They need it more than you do. |
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10/30/08 You bring forth a triumph and people (1) resent you for it, (2) expect you to do it again, except better, (3) watch for signs of pride on your part, and (4) await your debacle with cheerful anticipation. |
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10/29/08 A large part of bicycling’s popularity was that it was one of the few exhilarating enjoyments permitted to women, though some authorities worried that perhaps it was too exhilarating. The Georgia Journal of Medicine and Surgery, for one, believed that cycling was unsuitable for females because the movements of the legs and the pressure of the pelvis on the saddle were bound to arouse “feelings hitherto unrealized by the young maiden.” |
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10/28/08 Three dozen workers at an Indiana telemarketing call center quit rather than read a McCain campaign script attacking Obama, the liberal blog TalkingPointsMemo.com reported today. One of the robo calls said that Obama voted against "protecting children from danger" but offered no other specifics. Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle |
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10/27/08 Bush v. Gore: Untidy, still controversial case involving somewhat confused, largely Jewish, Democratic retirees in Palm Beach who in 2000 voted by mistake for Patrick Buchanan, an anti-Israel Republican, instead of pro-Israel Democrat Al Gore, eventually resulting in the presidency of George (not H.) W. Bush, 9/11, the Iraq War, a 40% decline of the U.S. dollar, the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008, a fatal tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, and a Nobel Prize for Gore. |
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10/26/08 The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. Not George Carlin |
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10/25/08 The cash register began life as the Incorruptible Cashier—so called because every dip into the till was announced with a noisy bell, thus making it harder for cashiers to engage in illicit delvings among the takings. For much the same reason, early owners discovered that if they charged odd amounts like 49 cents or 99 cents the cashier would very probably have to open the drawer to extract a penny change, obviating the possibility of the dreaded unrecorded transaction. |
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10/24/08 Then, out of nowhere, and without proper vetting, the impetuous McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. She quickly proved grievously underequipped to step into the presidency should McCain, at 72 and with a history of health problems, die in office. More than any single factor, McCain's bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency. |
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10/23/08 Thus in 1952 when Lucille Ball became pregnant, the term wasn’t permitted. She was expecting. Nor was it just sex that prompted censorship. In 1956, when Rod Serling wrote a script about a black youth in Mississippi who is murdered after whistling at a white woman, the producers of the U.S. Steel Hour enthusiastically went along with the idea—so long as the victim wasn’t black, wasn’t murdered, and didn’t live in the Deep South. |
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10/22/08 At the Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry would make a famous remark (curiously absent from modern high school textbooks) in which he compared a standing army to an erect penis—“an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.” |
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10/21/08 The question [Sarah Palin] keeps asking at all of the rallies is, "Who is Barack Obama?" You know what, genius, maybe if you'd picked up a newspaper in the last year you'd know. |
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10/20/08 Joe the Plumber, to Republicans, was instantly a working-class hero, a good, honest family man who just wanted to start a company and was gonna get socked by Obama's socialist ideas. By Thursday, the media were on his lawn. Katie Couric called him. You already could imagine the movie: "Mr. Wurzelbacher Goes to Washington." And then Joe opened his mouth. It turns out Joe has no plumber's license. Joe isn't in the plumbers union. Joe never did a plumbers apprenticeship. Joe's business likely would not be taxed under Obama's proposal. Joe might even get a tax cut under Obama's proposal. Joe doesn't believe in Social Security. Joe's first name isn't Joe, it's Samuel. And Samuel hasn't paid his taxes. And that's just as we go to press. By the time you read this, Joe may be a member of the Weathermen. None of this surprises me. It is what you get in a country that seems to think everything is a form of "American Idol." |
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10/19/08 Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes? Not George Carlin |
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10/18/08 Tina Fey has actually done more interviews about playing Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin has done about being Sarah Palin! McCain, Sen. Joe Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Cindy McCain and even McCain's 95-year-old momma and Palin's daddy have all done interviews with CNN, sharing their thoughts on the campaign. But Palin? Not a whisper. So, Sarah, if you want to talk big on the campaign trail to those audiences that don't talk back, go right ahead. But if you truly are the maverick politician you say you are, come on and talk to us soft, coddled, elitist journalists. Surely we aren't as tough as the moose you like to take down with your Second Amendment-protected hunting rifle. |
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10/17/08 I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to [Sarah Palin] just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses. |
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10/16/08 I think they wanted to put as much daylight between Christopher Buckley and themselves as they could. It's an odd situation, when the founder's son has suddenly become the turd in the punch bowl. Christopher Buckley, after endorsing Obama and resigning from the National Review |
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10/15/08 Iowa Caucus: A device to attract reporters to a state that they would otherwise never visit; its secondary purpose is to give the media something to report when the candidates whose victory they have been forecasting for months come in second and third, or not at all. |
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10/14/08 At a concert last week [Madonna] said she was going to kick Sarah Palin’s ass. I’m thinking I’d quite like to see that. That’s going to be a sexy little underpants pillow fight. Like Madonna tries to poke out the eyes with her pointy cone bra and Palin's well-protected with the naughty librarian glasses. Get out of my dreams and into my shiny-floored studio. But Madonna and Sarah Palin are very different, of course. One is a dangerously insane celebrity who has no business discussing politics and the other one is Madonna. |
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10/13/08 As stocks dropped sharply Monday, President Bush urged patience with the government's new $700-billion plan, saying it's going to take a while. The good news is, he's never been right. |
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10/12/08 It was Saint Patrick who drove the Norwegians out of Ireland. He did the snakes and then the Norwegians. He poisoned their fish with lye, but they just called it lutefisk and thought it was wonderful. So he pissed on their potatoes but they just made lefse from it and thought that was quite a treat. So Saint Patrick said, “This isn’t worth my time; they can just go to hell.” And that’s how Norwegians got to Minnesota. |
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10/11/08 Scarcely a western movie has been made in which at least one character hasn’t taken a bullet in the thigh or shoulder but shrugged it off with a manly wince and continued firing. As one critic put it: “One would think that the human shoulder was made of some self-healing material, rather like a puncture-proof tire.” In fact, nineteenth century bullets were so slow, relatively speaking, and so soft that they almost never moved cleanly through the victim’s body. Instead, they bounced around like a pinball and exited with a hole like a fist punched through paper. Even if they miraculously missed the victim’s vital organs, he would almost invariably suffer deep and incapacitating shock and bleed to death within minutes. |
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10/10/08 Now here’s this thing with John McCain…you know a couple of weeks ago, John McCain was supposed to be on the show. And at the last minute he calls me up – and I’ve got a lot of respect…you get a call from a senator – you get a call from a guy who is a bona fide war hero – all of a sudden, you know, your lips start to vibrate. So I said “Sure, whatever you want.” And he says, “Look, Dave, the economy is about to crater.” It’s about to “crater,” his word. “And I have to rush back to Washington to save the economy.” And so it made me feel puny. So I said, “OK, Senator, do what you have to do. Rush right back to Washington.” And then I hung up and I felt like a patriot. I felt like I had done my part. And he was supposed to be on the show like an hour later. So now, we’re in a hole but everybody has to pull together in economic hardship times. So we all pull together and we get that guy with the big head from MSNBC. What’s his name? Keith Olbermann, yeah. Giant head. So he comes over. He’s good. He’s very good. So now it turns out, not only did he not rush back to Washington, he spent the night here in New York City. He went on Katie Couric…he was on Conan…he was on Regis…he was everywhere. So now, in an attempt to save his campaign, they’re talking about coming back. You see what I’m saying? So we said, “Sure, we would love you to come back.” And even on the phone, he said, “I’ll bring….Sarah.” But they’re being squirrely. Politicians can be squirrely. Because we have a date picked. We do this show every afternoon at 5:30. He wants to do the show at 5. So one – we have no guarantee he’s going to show up, period. And we’ve kind of already rearranged our schedule on his behalf to save the economy, right? By getting that big-headed kid in here to talk about the politics. You know what I’m driving at? I just don’t know if we can trust him. And by the way, I don’t need to remind you that the road to the White House runs right through here." |
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10/9/08 [After Prohibition] Winegrowers, to their dismay, were reduced to producing harmless grape concentrate, which of course almost no one wanted. But they recovered their composure, and their fortunes, when they discovered that there was nothing illegal about posting a prominent label on each bottle announcing boldly: "WARNING; WILL FERMENT AND TURN INTO WINE,” and providing step-by-step instructions on how a careless consumer might inadvertently convert this healthy beverage into something with the power to make his legs wobble. |
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10/8/08 With the crisis in Wall Street and Washington, I’m suspending my comic strip to assist the nation. The best way I can help is to leave politics permanently and write funny stories for America’s kids. I call on John McCain to join me. |
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10/7/08 The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? Not George Carlin |
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10/6/08 I was reading about the fact that they are now putting an end to something called short selling, which is when you borrow stock that you don’t own and sell it hoping that it will go down so you can buy it back at a profit. This was legal, but pot smoking isn’t? |
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10/5/08 Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money! If God dropped acid, would he see people? Not George Carlin |
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10/4/08 There's some folks that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em. |
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10/3/08 I trust the American people will see through Palin, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment. |
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10/2/08 Capital is as terrified of the absence of profit or a very small profit as nature is of a vacuum. With suitable profits, capital is awakened; with 10 percent, it can be used anywhere; with 20 percent, it becomes lively; with 50 percent, positively daring; with 100 percent, it will crush all human laws under its feet; and with 300 percent, there is no crime it is not willing to dare, even at the risk of the gallows. |
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10/1/08 I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung? |
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9/30/08 Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who is clearly out of her league. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there. If bullshit were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself. Kathleen Parker, National Review |
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9/29/08 All the activity you see at the White House in recent days has only one goal; to avoid a total collapse on Bush's watch. By the time the next President takes office the current administration will have eaten all the nation's remaining seed corn, leaving the next administration virtually nothing to re-grow the economy. And then there's America's exhausted military. The surge succeeded, but not in the way the administration likes to claim. The surge succeeded putting off the inevitable collapse in Iraq until after Bush leaves office. |
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9/28/08 The first [common misconception about the Puritans] is the belief that they had come to America to establish freedom of religion. In truth, freedom of worship was the last thing they wanted. Having suffered years of persecution on their native soil, they desired nothing from America so much as the opportunity to establish a system of equal intolerance of their own. |
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9/28/08 There are plenty of things that can be done without having the government own 3 million foreclosed houses. The plan says the government can buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. If they buy a mortgage and it gets foreclosed, guess what? We've got the foreclosed house. Who's going to manage that house in the Las Vegas desert in the empty housing project where the vandals are tearing it apart? Do we really want the U.S. government to be the landlord? |
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9/26/08 The American passion for gambling made bet a commonplace in the wider language in expressions like you bet I do, you bet your life, and so on, which foreign observers commonly noted as a distinguishing characteristic of American speech by the early nineteenth century. Mark Twain told the story of a Westerner who had to break the news of Joe Toole’s death to his widow. “Does Joe Toole live here?” the Westerner asks, and when the wife answers in the affirmative, he says, “Bet you he don’t!” |
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9/25/08 The idea of "too big to fail" also means "too big to punish," and "too big to hold accountable." Punishment and accountability are only for the little guy. Adamantly opposed to helping the people who these policies have damaged, and instead dumping the bill for their own destruction upon the victims, while the perpetrators sail off unscathed, their stolen booty intact, thus adding insult to injury, the people in charge of "fixing the problem" will instead continue the policies that have brought us to this disaster. |
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9/24/08 During the presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee ran a television advertisement praising President Reagan for cost-of-living pay increases to federal workers “in spite of those sticks-in-the-mud who tried to keep him from doing what we elected him to do.” When it was pointed out that the increases had in fact been mandated by law since 1975 and that Reagan had in any case tried three times to block them, a Republican official responded: “Since when is a commercial supposed to be accurate?” |
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9/23/08 Short of nuclear warheads that have already been launched, there is no situation that cannot be met head-on with inaction. |
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9/22/08 We're overpaying him but he's worth it. |
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9/21/08 Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. |
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9/20/08 Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right? |
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9/19/08 Vance Bourjaily, admired, as I've said, by Hemingway, gave me a rule of thumb about hunting. "The bigger the game," he said, "the more corrupted the soul of the hunter." Which reminds me of what he said about duck hunting. He said it was like standing in a cold shower with all your clothes on and tearing up twenty-dollar bills. |
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9/18/08 I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money. |
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9/17/08 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. |
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9/16/08 It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. |
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9/15/08 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. |
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9/14/08 Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. |
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9/13/08 I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time. John McCain, October, 2007 |
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9/12/08 In the great media markets of Hollywood and New York the trend is toward consolidation; every year there seem to be fewer and fewer players controlling ever larger and more complex entities. Soon the whole world of entertainment may belong to Michael Eisner, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and one or two others. What is forgotten is that all these major players are aging men; what they have so competitively gathered together may, in only a few years, scatter again, break back into fragments. The entities they have created are for a day, not forever. |
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9/11/08 Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. |
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9/10/08 Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. |
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9/9/08 Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom. |
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9/8/08 Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason. Author Unknown |
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9/7/08 If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. |
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9/6/08 The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is... the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. |
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9/5/08 The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face. |
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9/4/08 A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. |
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9/3/08 In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. |
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9/2/08 Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. |
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9/1/08 The role of the vice president is to break ties in the Senate and inquire daily into the health of the president. |
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8/31/08 The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. |
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8/30/08 McCain will now have to pull off a grand slam of cognitive dissonance - trying to discredit Barack Obama as unready to be Commander in Chief while trying to pawn off the least qualified candidate put on a national ticket in our lifetime as the second best choice to lead the most powerful nation in the world. |
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8/29/08 My entire store of information about scientific activity comes from what I’ve seen in the movies. There, scientists used to be represented as men in white coats busy with incomprehensible jumbles of glass tubing connected to foaming beakers and bubbling test tubes. Now, scientists are represented as men (and women) in white coats busy with incomprehensible jumbles of numbers on computer screens. All I can really tell you about science is that its set designers aren’t as good as they used to be. |
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8/28/08 The midwest symbolized by amber waves of grain and large solid families has rarely been the midwest I’ve found. In the famous Grant Wood painting American Gothic it’s the pitchfork I notice first. Is the farmer going to stick that pitchfork into a bale of hay, or is he going to stick it into his wife? |
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8/27/08 The most eye-catching billboards along this stretch [of I-20] were for microsurgical vasectomy reversal, a growth industry in Texas, evidently. A lot of good old boys must have come to feel that, after all, they want families rather than just fucking. |
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8/26/08 Very soon I was beyond the Beltway, the trafficky circumferential that manages to give Washington proper something of the aspect of a walled city. The Beltway protects our governing body from whatever chance infection of common sense might occasionally waft in from the country at large. |
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8/25/08 A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are all good things; but a mind is blown when something that you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else; that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge. |
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8/24/08 Uncle Jack was also a devoted Jewish scholar who nightly studied Torah and Talmud, and who had in the past year embarked upon the study of kabbalah, that body of Jewish mystical teachings that have produced the Zohar, the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi, and a sense of deep understanding and inner peace, or so one presumes, for Madonna and Roseanne Barr. |
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8/23/08 Jack Kerouac said long ago that L.A. was the West Coast’s one and only golden town, and he was right. Even though the movie executives have gotten much younger, the meetings even more vacuous, and the secondhand bookstores less numerous, I still get a lift from going there, still enjoy its confusion, its color, its brassiness. |