About Me: 2004 Archives

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck i've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down. Simone Weil says simply, "Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love." Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
     And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
     And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

Perchance it may be so--at least
     I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
     Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
     In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
     While all the forest sang of liberty.

Oscar Wilde, Apologia

I think that the dying pray at the last not 'please,' but 'thank you,' as a guest thanks her host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate.

context Hooptyrides

Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves, and in their struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the culture as well. Robert M. Pirsig, Lila

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. Marcus, Babylon 5

A person of sense ought never to have his children
Brought up to be more clever than average.
For, apart from cleverness bringing them no profit,
It will make them the objects of envy and ill-will.
If you put new idea before the eyes of fools
They'll think you foolish and worthless in the bargain;
And if you are thought superior to those who have
Some reputation for learning, you will become hated.
I have some knowledge myself of how this happens;
For being clever, I find that some will envy me,
Others object to me. Yet all my cleverness 
Is not so much.

Euripides, Medea

For every complex problem, there's a simple solution: and it's wrong. Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

The history of every major Galactic civilization has gone through three distinct and recognizable phases--those of survival, inquiry and sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?', the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, though here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy--Thus Retribution: 'I am going to kill you because you killed my brother', Anticipation: 'I am going to kill you because I killed your brother', and Diplomacy: 'I am going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.' Douglas Adams, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts

Does life ever feel like you're standing in the grocery store checkout line to buy a six-pack of gum and in front of you are six people with cartloads full of food, and nothing has price tags on it, so the checker who's new and doesn't speak any English, has to run a price check on everything while in the background is playing an instrumental version of Olivia Newton John's "Let Get Physical." Dawn Pulispher, letter, 1989

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own herd. BlackAdder, BlackAdder II

I'm not used to the laughter of children. It cuts through me like a dentist's drill. Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons

Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control. Emily Ivie

I'd really like to tell this damn government what I think, but thanks to the Patriot Act, they already know. American Voices, The Onion