Colonel Davy Crockett, Explorer and Congressman (1786-1836)
Posted on 2007-11-12 at 20:18
"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have."
Fuck anyone that tells me to give up anything out of fear. Terrorism scares me far less than my own government slowly peeling my freedoms away, one onion layer at a time.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote, published in 1604
Posted on 2007-11-07 at 21:07
Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."
Sometimes I worry that I identify too greatly with the Ingenious Knight of La Mancha. It's not that I think the world doesn't need people willing to tilt at giants, real and imagined, but rather that things didn't end well for the Don.
In the end, Quixote is left disillusioned with humanity---his fleeting bliss fading in favor of a solemn sanity while he turns his back on the very civility that once gave his life meaning. He dies melancholy, hopeless, and broken.
I'm not down with that part.
Ron Paul Cured My Apathy
Posted on 2007-10-11 at 20:26
This is a solid video. Watch it:
"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." ~ George Washington, First President of the United States of America
A Quote by James D. Nicoll
Posted on 2007-08-28 at 20:20
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
George Bernard Shaw (Writer, 1856-1950)
Posted on 2007-05-16 at 07:49
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
Read it and work through its implications.
Your Moment of Zen
Posted on 2007-03-01 at 08:45
"People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil."
~ Kahlil Gibran (Essayist, Novelist and Poet. 1883-1931)
Meditate on that as you watch the accompanying movie I've selected:
"Make Up" or "Make Believe"
Posted on 2007-01-21 at 15:07
There too he sculptured a broad fallow field
Of soft rish mould, thrice ploughed, and over which
Walked many a ploughman, guiding to and fro
His steers, and when on their return they reached
The border of the field the master came
To meet them, placing in the hands of each
a goblet of rich wine. Then turned they back
Along the furrows, diligent to reach
Their distant end. All dark behind the plough
The ridges lay, a marvel to the sight.
Like the field in the quote above from Homer's Illiad, these women are made into an image of beauty. It is not the dirt in the field we find beautiful nor the woman under the makeup, but rather it is the beauty, even the dignity, that our culture bestows on them that makes them pleasing to us. Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty are not easily distinguished. Like the education of our children, we move purposefully from a natural to a cultural state. It's what we do. We transform nature. We make it in our self-image as we perceive it, and when it gets too hard to do on our own, we ask for help---from ploughmen, makeup artists, painters...and each other.
I was leaving the building for the day. A co-worker was leaving at the same time. When we saw each other standing up, we gave our daily good bye's, put on our coats and left our cubes. Hollywood would have the decency to fade to black at this point, but real life is not so interested in transforming nature. No, we'd said all that needed saying. We both got up and left. Problem is, we both went the same way. So now, we are walking to the parking lot together in an awkward silence. No script was prepared. No protocol readied us for the silent walk out. I said, "So it's not so easy to get rid of me, is it?" We laughed. The moment was rescued from reality and given a cultural context---hence a beauty. As a species, we don't like ugly.
So, what does it mean to say someone is a human? I suppose it depends on who you ask, but I would argue that we are not merely complex bipedal mammal. Being human is more than that. It's about stopping to enjoy a warm fire in a winter chill, it's about having a dream, seeking out the things that are pleasing. Being human is about enjoying the beauty that we, each of us, adds to the world in which we live. I could be crass about the Hollywood makeovers in the video above, but I think I'll just be grateful to the directors, the artists, designers, scriptwriters, and air-brushers who are trying to give us a little bit more beautiful world than the one in which we find ourselves. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1938- )
Posted on 2006-07-24 at 08:20
"Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true."
Robert E. Howard has enviably lyrical prose
Posted on 2006-04-23 at 21:40
In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle ... Let me live deep where I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay and am content.
Spoken by Conan in Queen of the Black Coast
Because every guy reading this can relate
Posted on 2006-02-15 at 07:32
A snippet of infinite coolness from the book Snow Crash:
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
What guy reading this doesn't agree? Pretty cool book.
Chuck Jones, The Scarlet Pumpernickel
Posted on 2006-01-17 at 08:30
"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
Fred "Mr." Rogers
Posted on 2006-01-13 at 10:42
"The secret of life is that when you are with another person---whether in the flesh or on the phone---is to make sure that other person does not feel alone."
Sir Winston Churchill
Posted on 2005-12-14 at 08:03
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
Said in a speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943. Fairly prophetic, I'd say.
Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
Posted on 2005-10-21 at 08:01
"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
The price of employment
Posted on 2005-10-05 at 08:02
Every day's another loss
Need the pay so please the boss
Through the sludge they mingle by the mile
Every worker looks ahead
Ah the kiddies must be fed
So they trudge along in single file
Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)
Posted on 2005-10-05 at 08:01
"Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence."
Joss Whedon talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Posted on 2005-09-01 at 08:01
"I designed the show to create that strong reaction. I designed Buffy to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult. And it mythologizes it in such a way, such a romantic way—it basically says, "Everybody who made it through adolescence is a hero." And I think that's very personal, that people get something from that that's very real. And I don't think I could be more pompous. But I mean every word of it. I wanted her to be a cultural phenomenon. I wanted there to be dolls, Barbie with kung-fu grip. I wanted people to embrace it in a way that exists beyond, "Oh, that was a wonderful show about lawyers, let's have dinner." I wanted people to internalize it, and make up fantasies where they were in the story, to take it home with them, for it to exist beyond the TV show. And we've done exactly that." (The Tenacity of the Cockroach 375)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Not a bad poet for an American
Posted on 2005-08-15 at 08:04
We never know we go,--when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Posted on 2005-08-02 at 08:03
"Furor fit laesa saepius patientia."
Right now, I'm feeling ya, Dryden, I'm feeling ya.
Blind Tom Wiggins (1849-1908)
Posted on 2005-06-11 at 08:01
"What was he? Whence came he, and wherefore?"
Medgar Evers (1925-1963) - Why I Live in Mississippi
Posted on 2005-04-10 at 08:02
"It may sound funny, but I love the South. I don't choose to live anywhere else. There's land here, where a man can raise cattle, and I'm going to do it some day. There are lakes where a man can sink a hook and fight the bass. There is room here for my children to play and grow, and become good citizens---if the white man will let them...."
George Orwell, Writer (1903-1950)
Posted on 2005-03-24 at 08:03
"To imagine the future, imagine a boot stepping on a human face---forever."
Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)
Posted on 2005-01-03 at 08:01
"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."
Happy New Year!
Herman Goering, founder of the Gestapo and one of the main architects of Nazi Germany
Posted on 2004-10-01 at 08:01
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. [...] Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
William O. Douglas, Judge (1898-1980)
Posted on 2004-08-01 at 08:02
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
Posted on 2004-08-01 at 08:01
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
Bruce Lee
Posted on 2004-05-07 at 08:02
"The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be." Words worth remembering.
Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)
Posted on 2004-03-09 at 08:01
"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves."
Liebe meine abst-monkey!
Posted on 2004-03-08 at 08:01
"Gregor Was, your presence intimidates me to the point of humiliation. Would you care to strike me?"