Once upon a time, before the Internet became vulgar, those of us who ran servers had a service called fingerd. We’d put stuff in a file called “.plan” in our home directory, and anyone “fingering” our userid would get to see the contents of that file. Then the Internet filled up with assholes and it became dangerous to leave services like that running.
It’s been about ten years since I had a room full of Internet-accessible servers, and I miss having my .plan as a place to put fun quotes and other trivia. It just occurred to me that such stuff wouldn’t be at all out of place in a blog. Herewith…
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– March 13th, 1998
RIOT
64. A riot is an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously. R.S., c. C-34, s. 65.
PUNISHMENT OF RIOTER
65. Every one who takes part in a riot is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years. R.S., c. C-34, s. 66.
PUNISHMENT FOR UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY
66. Every one who is a member of an unlawful assembly is guilty of an offense punishable on summary conviction. R.S., c. C-34, s. 67.
READING PROCLAMATION.
67. A justice, mayor, or sheriff, or the lawful deputy of a mayor or sheriff, who receives notice that, at anyplace withinhis jurisdiction, twelve or more persons are unlawfully and riotously assembled together shall go to that place and, after approaching as near as safely he may do, if he is satisfied that a riot is in progress, shall command silence and thereupon make or cause to be made in a loud voice a proclamation in the following words or to the like effect:
Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of
being guilty of an offense for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.
– Martin’s (Canadian) Criminal Code
1995 Edition
Q. WHAT THE FUCK, HUH?! I MEAN, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?
A. Let me see if I can answer that as succinctly as possible…
– P.J. O’Rourke
During Korea – I was in college then – the government couldn’t decide whether I was a security risk or not – I wore a beard – so they put a mail check on me. Every day the mail would come later and later. And it would be bent. Corners torn. Never sealed correctly. Like they didn’t give a damn whether I knew they were reading my mail or not. I was more of a militant in those days, so I decided to fight fire with fire. I began writing letters to the guy who was reading my mail. I addressed them to myself, of course, but inside they went something like: “Dear Sir: I am not that different from you. All men are brothers. Tomorrow instead of reading my mail in that dark, dusty hall why not bring it upstairs where we can check it out together!” I never got an answer. So I wrote a second letter. “Dear Sir: There are no heroes, no villains, no good guys, no bad guys. The world is more complicated than that. Come on up where we can open a couple of beers and talk it all out.” Again, no answer. So then I wrote: “Dear Sir: I’ve been thinking too much of my own problems, too little of yours. Yours cannot be a happy task – reading another man’s mail. It’s dull, unimaginative. A job – and let’s not mince words – for a hack. Yet I wonder – can this be the way you see yourself? Do you see yourself as a hack? Do you see yourself as the office slob? Have you ever wondered why they stuck you with this particular job, instead of others who have less seniority? Or, was it, do you think, that your supervisor looked around the office to see who he’d stick for the job, saw you and said, ‘No one will miss him for a month!'” And still, no answer. But that letter – that letter never got delivered to me. So then I wrote: “Dear Friend: Just a note to advise: you may retain my letters as long as you deem fit. Reread them. Study them. Think them out. Who back at the office is out to get you? Who, at this very moment, is sitting at your desk, reading your mail? I do not say this to be cruel, but because I am the only one left you can trust -” No answer. But – the next day a man, saying he was from the telephone company showed up – no complaint had been made – to check the phone. Shaky hands. Bloodshot eyes. A small quaver in his voice. And as he dismembered my phone he said, “Look. What nobody understands is that everybody has his job to do. I got my job. In this case it’s repairing telephones. I like it or I don’t like it but it’s my job. If I had another job – say, for example, with the F.B.I. – or someplace, putting in a wiretap, for example, or reading a guy’s mail – like it or don’t like it it would be my job! Has anyone got the right to destroy a man for doing his job?” I wrote one more letter – expressing my deep satisfaction that he and I had at last made contact, and informing him that the next time he came, perhaps to read the meter, I had valuable information, photostats, recordings, names and dates, about the conspiracy against him. This letter showed up a week after I mailed it, in a crumpled grease-stained, and scotch-taped envelope. The letter itself was torn in half and then clumsily glued together again. In the margin, on the bottom, in large, shaky letters was written the word “Please!” I wasn’t bothered again. It was after this that I began to wonder: If they’re that unformidable why bother to fight back? It’s very dangerous to challenge a system unless you’re completely at peace with the thought that you’re not going to miss it when it collapses.
– Alfred Chamberlain fr. Act II, Scene 1
Little Murders (Jules Feiffer)
Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.
– Kinky Friedman
My name is Norman Manyheads. I can take you there, but I cannot show you the way.
– Road to Saddle River
I believe in justice
I believe in vengeance
I believe in getting the bastard
Getting the bastard
Getting the bastard
– New Model Army Vengeance
Well, y’know, I dunno, y’know?
– Mark Pauline
We were taking mescaline, which doesn’t mix with whiskey. It makes you argumentative without the capacity to follow the argument, and combative, which is difficult to be when you’re in combat with things that aren’t there.
– P.J. O’Rourke So Drunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money
The shit has hit the fan.
– Warren Zevon
Try not to die like a dog.
– Monty (Ralph Richardson) to Michael Travis (Malcolm McDowell) Oh, Lucky Man
I was crazy when crazy meant something. Now everyone’s crazy.
– Charles Manson, 1994
I was a geek when geek meant something. Now everyone’s a geek.
– jl, 2014
You’re only as smart as the most stupid thing people know you did.
-jl
The answer is because in their philosophy life is not as important as death. If death and the imminence of death serves the purpose of bringing a person to his knees before the Church, then it is worth using as a positive instrument of propagating the faith. The Church therefore condones capital punishment.
They went a long way toward refining its methods themselves during the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Of course I disagree with them and of course they have a right to believe whatever they all do; all I want is for them to come out and admit it and stop issuing sanctimonious bullshit saying one thing while they pursue the opposite.
And since they condone capital punishment, I want them to stop bitching about Jesus getting nailed up.
– Lenny Bruce
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
The force exerted by the moral sense of the individual is less effective than social myth would have us believe. Though such prescriptions as “Thou shalt not kill” occupy a pre-eminent place in the moral order, they do not occupy a correspondingly intractable position in human psychic structure. A few changes in newspaper headlines, a call from the draft board, orders from a man with epaulets, and men are led to kill with little difficulty. Even the forces mustered in a psychology experiment will go a long way toward removing the individual from moral controls. Moral factors can be shunted aside with relative ease by a calculated restructuring of the informational and social field.
– Stanley Milgram
Obedience to Authority
i’m sorry, i’m utterly sorry, i’m completely and utterly sorry for what i did to you. my “defense” is that i was taken in by prettigiani (who no longer works at virtual by the way, having been given the boot), who brainwashed everybody into believing *you* were fucking everything up. after you left he effectively took control of the company, milking it for everything he could get and playing mindgames with everybody, in particularly me. i feel like i was taken in by the Moonies or something. he’s gone now, the beckers _finally_ having figured out what he was doing, or not doing actually. had himself a pretty nice gig here, doing nothing much except fucking around, coming in if he felt like it, getting his cohorts hired, and managing to get himself a nice house in the NE with all the money the company paid him to “develop” hardware. btw: he been living with donna for the last 4 years. i shoulda known the guy was twisted when i heard about that.
if it’s any consolation, the last 3 years have been pretty horrible in this place. the combination of hook and prettigiani made this place a living hell and drove me to the funny farm for awhile.
– Mike Nemeth
This email is without prejudice,private and confidential. I have recently found out about a slanderous entry in your finger response. I wish I had not quit last year so that I could have
used my maniacal vulcan mind control powers and made his last year there hell also (he was fired in Sept. 98). I had to use my long distance telepathic powers over the last year to get him fired. :-}
PS. I’m not sorry you were fired, your behaviour towards everyone required it.
“Better you than me”
A Grunt in “Full Metal Jacket”, Stanley Kubrick 1987
– Jerry P.
Something about your face makes me want to slap the shit out of it.
– Harry Mitchell (Roy Scheider) to
Alan Raimy (John Glover) in 52 Pick-Up
I’m learning to live with a lot of things.
– Darkman
Nice enough people. They just haven’t thought it through.
– Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro) Wag the Dog
I take music pretty seriously. See that scar on my wrist? You see that? You know what it’s from? Huh? Huh? Huh? I heard the Bee Gees were getting back together again – I couldn’t take it, okay? That was the only good thing about the 1980s – we got rid of one of the Bee Gees. One down, three to go, that’s what I say, folks. Here’s ten bucks, bring me the head of Barry Manilow.
– Denis Leary
No Cure For Cancer
Michael Enright: “But surely, anyone who would play Mahler on a ukelele is a sociopath.”
Robert Sapulsky: “I believe that’s what recent scientific studies indicate.”
– The Sunday Edition, CBC radio, March 29/98
Friends don’t let friends live stunned.
– Mrs. Enid (Cathy Jones) This Hour Has 22 MInutes
You know what I wish? That we had a sandbox big enough for my head.
– Herb Peyerl
Well, thank you. You’re a crass and miserable sellout.
– J.B. Dixon (Rick Mercer) This Hour Has 22 Minutes
No such thing as spare time
No such thing as free time
No such thing as down time
– Henry Rollins
Shine
I just want outa the loop, Artie. This is a bad, evil loop.
– Larry Sanders (Garry Shandling) The Larry Sanders Show
There are just as many lightweights, boobs, and screwballs in Congress as there are in your home town. You wouldn’t want those people under-represented.
– US Senator Alan Simpson on Politically Incorrect
It’s easy to find someone who wants to go to bed. But it’s real hard to find somebody who’ll let you say, “Look, I got a cardboard box and a carpeted floor. Here’s my plan. You get in the box and hold this flashlight and I’ll push you around like you’re in a car.”
– Chris Isaak in Mademoiselle magazine
I have a strong desire to move to the US, so that every time I perceive an injustice I can stand up and say, “But dammit, this is America!”.
– Paul McGovern
“C+ for French!”
– Richard Chadbourne, from the audience, after a demonstration of Eugene’s language skills.
“C for parenting!”
– Eugene Chadbourne, replying from the stage.
I’m trying to contain an outbreak here and you’re driving the monkey to the airport.
– King of the Hill
At Tommy’s, the Los Angeles all-night drive-in at Beverly and Rampart that has grown into a chain, chiliburgers are not on the menu. A Tommy’s is a chiliburger – a unique meld of beef-chili-tomato-mustard-onion-and-pickle flavors. Those who have tried to recreate a Tommy’s at home discover that the big secret of its flavor is the marvelously thick red-ripe tomato slice, laid next to the meat patty before the final dip of chili. The luscious ripeness, size, and thickness of the tomato slice at Tommy’s seldom vary, in season and out, high prices or low. A Tommy’s is added evidence that Wick Fowler was right in his stubborn insistence that tomato brings out the flavor of chili.
Californians travel the state to get to Tommy’s. Through the day and night Cadillacs, Jaguars, and BMW’s, as well as low-riding Chevvies and vans, back up in a parking lot accompanied by a tiny hut just big enough to house a three-person team of cook, helper, and cashier, and the raw materials. The inside space is so small that soft drink coolers are outside; customers serve themselves, and pay on the honor system.
The traffic and people-watching go on twenty-four hours a day. Crowds were getting so big a few years ago that an annex kitchen and another parking lot had to be added. Both were shunned by the Tommy’s regulars, who considered the additions a Siberia (restaurant lingo for the worst seating in the house). They preferred to circle the block waiting for space in the old lot, and line up at the original kitchen, no matter how long the wait there – or how short it was over at the new kitchen, just yards away.
Tommy’s next move was to establish branch locations in suburban areas, like the San Fernando Valley. These also do business on a twenty-four-hour basis, but the plan failed as a device for slowing the crowds at the original stand.
– Bill Bridges
The Great Chili Book
1981, Whitecap Books
Reality has style.
– David Alan Kepesh
The Breast (Philip Roth)
Reality is not what it used to be.
– In the Mouth of Madness
(John Carpenter)
Oh, your mind amazes me!
– Paula (Janeane Garofalo) The Larry Sanders Show
I’m just now comfortable with it myself.
– Artie (Rip Torn)
Chapter 4, Section II: Demolition of Materiel to Prevent Enemy Use
35. Authority for Demolition
Demolition of the equipment will be accomplished only on the order of the commander. The demolition procedures given in paragraph 36 will be used to prevent the enemy from using or salvaging this equipment.
36. Methods of Destruction
Any of all of the methods of destruction given below may be used. The time available will be the major determining factor for the methods to be used in most instances when destruction of equipment is undertaken. The tactical situation also will determine in what manner the destruction order will be carried out. It is preferable to demolish completely some portions of the equipment (counter assemblies, nixies, and beam switching tubes) rather than destroy the entire equipment partially.
a. Smash. Smash the controls, tubes, switches, counters, transformers, and spare parts; use sledges, axes, hammers, and any other heavy tools available.
b. Cut. Cut the power cord and the signal cord in several places; use axes or machetes.
c. Burn. Burn as much of the equipment as is flammable; use gasoline, oil, flame throwers, etc. Burn the technical manuals, cabling, and spare parts. Use incendiary grenades to complete the destruction of the frequency meter interior.
d. Explode. Use explosives to complete demolition or to cause maximum damage, before burning, when time does not permit complete demolition by other means. Place an incendiary or
fragmentation grenade in the frequency meter. Clear the area before the explosion takes place.
e. Dispose. Bury or scatter the destroyed parts in slit trenches, or throw them into streams.
– T.O. 33A1-5-73-11
Technical Manual, Operation and Organizational Maintenance, Frequency Meter AN/TSM-16
Published under Authority of the Secretary of the Air Force, 11 June 1959
Oh, cut the crap. Don’t talk to me the way I’d be talking to me.
– Artie (Rip Torn) The Larry Sanders Show
This is the domain of our experienced and surly technical staff.
– Paul Moth The Great Eastern
Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and I’ll give you something to cry about, you little bastard.
– Jeff Goldblum
Great White Hype
Tact Filters
All people have a “tact filter”, which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most “normal people” have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!”
“Nerds,” on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “They’re just saying those mean things because they’re jealous. They don’t really mean it.”
When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one’s feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one’s feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people’s feelings often get hurt because the nerds don’t apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.
So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can’t do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn’t be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.
– http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
You can’t wipe your ass with a web page.
– Martin Mueller
Satisfaction guaranteed or double your garbage back.
– Kosland Waste Removal
A hamburger not finished by a dead consumer is a revolutionary hamburger.
– Moscow mall bombers’ note
September 1st, 1999
Remember, I’m pullin’ for you. We’re all in this together.
– Red Green
Everybody loves you when you have a cheeseburger.
– Susan Deike
It’s one thing to deal with people who are broke. It’s another thing to deal with people who are broke and stupid.
– Peter Linder
They wouldn’t call it “forbidden” unless there was something totally bitchin’ on the other side.
– Reese
Wow. I can’t find a flaw in his logic.
– Malcolm
Look out, honey, ’cause I’m using technology.
– Iggy and the Stooges
Search and Destroy
The Irish, the Sicilians, and the Jews had one experience in common that the other racial groups had not: European backgrounds in which self-preservation had depended upon fighting and clannish solidarity against an internal enemy – the English landowners and soldiery in Ireland, the French occupation forces in Sicily, and the anti-Semitism that ringed the Jews in almost every European city. The ancestors of the Prohibition gangsters had survived by using their muscles and their cunning. Their parents came over to America with an ingrained bitter antipathy toward the theory of justice, which, in their experience was more often than not used as a truncheon of despotism, and consequently they were not so easily dazzled and drawn by the American lodestar of middle-class managerial respectability.
– Kenneth Allsop
The Bootleggers
The object of the exercise was to kill Bugs Moran and as many of his associates as possible, to demonstrate that the Capone mob was in charge. Moran was suspected of hijacking, or buying from hijackers, Capone’s supplies of a popular brand of whisky, Old Log Cabin. To test this theory, Moran’s confidence was built up in a dealer, a supposed hijacker. This double agent, now trusted by Moran, told Bugs to expect a consignment at the garage in North Clark Street at 10:30 in the morning of February 14th, 1929.
Two of Capone’s men were watching the scene from a house across the street. Punctually, most of the members of Moran’s gang arrived; the Gusenberg brothers, Frank and Pete; Adam Heyer; James Clark; Reinhardt Schwimmer, who was not actually a member but an amateur observer of low life; and Al Weinshank. Also there was a mechanic, Johnny May, who had his German Shepherd dog, Highball, with him, his leash tied to a truck. Bugs Moran, Ted Newberry, and Willie Marks were late and were to offer a useful argument against any merit in being punctual for a business appointment.
– John Morgan
Prince of Crime
You can’t send a cat to do a dog’s job.
– Susan Deike
Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.
– Tony Soprano
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun.
– The Clash
The Guns of Brixton
Forward in all directions!
– 3 Mustaphas 3
There’s no shame in being a pariah.
– Marge Simpson
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.
– Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
I thought I was waking up to a replay of Orwell’s “War of the Worlds”.
– Ralph Klein
September 11th, 2001
I suppose the Martians’ mantra would be: “Two legs bad, three legs good”.
– Dan Hay
What goes up must come down. That’s Newton’s Law.
– Ralph Klein, citing Blood, Sweat, and Tears, April 11th, 2006
As it stands, Plan “B” is just to keep on givin’ ‘er.
– Dean (Paul Spence) Fubar
Oh, those crazy cards again… [laughs]… you know, one of the old gents said you showed him a lot of vulgar pictures.
– Hermann Goering, upon being given a Rorschach test during the Nuremberg trials
Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.
– Robert Fripp
The Internet business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There’s also a negative side.
– jl, stealing shamelssly from Hunter S. Thompson
Americans know as much about Canadians as straights do about gays.
– Buddy Cole (Scott Thompson) The Kids in the Hall
If I said something every time I saw something coming we’d never get anything done.
– Artie (Rip Torn) The Larry Sanders Show
You know, talking to you is like… talking to you.
– Larry Sanders (Garry Shandling) to Artie
Hey, I never noticed that picnic tables are just built out of 2x6s.
– jl
Yeah, just like our steps, except picnic table-shaped.
– sd
If you thought more like Spock and less like Hitler we wouldn’t have a problem.
– geek lunch
Q: Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone please explain why I should use Linux over BSD?
A: No. That’s it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using Linux just to be able to say, “OS/2? Hah. I’ve got Linux. What a cool name.” 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.
– Linus Torvalds’ follow-up to a question
about Linux, cited in Linux Journal,
December 2000, p. 12 .
It’s like trying to swim a barrel of syrup. They just want to stand there, chew their cud, and gaze off into the distance with their big brown eyes.
– General Montague
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The only thing better than a nude woman is a nude woman in a pair of very high heeled shoes.
– Vivienne Westwood
I’m just the guy who does the thing.
– Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) The West Wing
Q. Are you a typical Canadian?
A. No, some of us are really quite nice.
– ReGenesis
Perfection is the enemy of “good enough”.
– Robert A. Pease
You got a lot of attitude for someone going out of style.
– Danko Jones
“I Love Living in the City”
Brotzmann, the tenor sax player, one of the greatest alive.
– Bill Clinton, when asked by the Oxford American to name a musician people would be surprised he listened to.
The Bill Clinton Collection: Selections from the Clinton Music Room, Museum Music MM137, Running Time: 57:53
- Miles Davis: My Funny Valentine
- Nina Simone: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
- John Coltrane: My One and Only Love
- Zoot Sims: Summertime
- Mahalia Jackson: Take My Hand, Precious Lord
- Igor Butman: Nostalgie
- Judy Collins: Chelsea Morning
- Art Tatum: There Will Never Be Another You
- Mickey Mangun: In the Presence of Jehovah
- David Sandborn: Harlem Nocturne
- Phil Coulter: The Town I Loved So Well
That’s the thing about twins. Basically, they’re just a conspiracy of two.
– John Munch (Richard Belzer)
Law and Order
That’s the trouble with rodents. Just when you think you’ve got rid of them, they come back.
– Fin Tutuola (Ice-T)
Law and Order
Daddy, me need a pony.
– Baby Becky
July 30th, 2005
Once upon a pile of time, I got an owie from a sliver.
– Baby Sarah
Feb 20th, 2006
There was a really interesting talk by a woman named Marcie Cohen Ferris called “We Didn’t Know from Fatback” about growing up Jewish in Arkansas and loving barbecue. I stated in my talk that apparently the people in Arkansas hadn’t heard of the “barbecue easement” that was granted by the Joplin rebbe who was a distinguished Talmudist and pitmaster. He said that for Jews in the South and Midwest, it was kosher to eat any animal that was subjected to at least four hours of slow cooking and that had four hooves and no scales.
– Calvin Trillin
quoted in “Peace, Love, and Barbecue”
I forbid you to pursue this idea. I want you to stop right now. Okay, I’ve changed my mind. It’s not just a bad idea, it’s evil. Stop this madness. I forbid you to go forward.
– Kevin O’Leary on GreenServer
Dragons’ Den, CBC TV
Taped August 8th, 2006
Aired October 11th, 2006
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
– Mahatma Ghandi
Everybody get 15 minutes of fame. What they don’t tell you is that 12 minutes of it is a rectal exam.
– John Oliver The Daily Show October 16th, 2008
Warhol got it wrong. Nobody should have to suffer 15 minutes of fame.
– James Gosling
In order for the boat to have vertical stability, the hydrofoils must somehow manage to “see” the air-water interface and thus be able to respond to a vertical displacement perturbation in such a way as to rapidly restore the original flight altitude. Fully immersed foils can only do this by operating very near the surface where lift is a sensitive function of depth, or by having a surface sensor that transmits orders to the hydrofoil for required changes in angle of attack. At the present stage of development, this feedback method is, in the author’s estimation, too heavy and complicated to be appealing.
– Joseph Norwood, Jr.
High Speed Sailing (1979)
You could do it that way.
– Ed Kalau
I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a “surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow.” The etymology of the word is obscure; in fact, unknown. But through frequent recent usage, the term is acquiring a broader meaning, which our dictionaries have not yet caught up to. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.
– Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing.
– Ani DiFranco
To the Teeth (1999)
Q. How many Calgarians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. One million. One to do the thing with the bulb, 999,999 to relive the glory of the 1988 Winter Olympics.
Q. How many Albertans does it take to change a light bulb?
A. “Change”? What’s that? (Note: This answer expired in 2015.)
Forget the myths that the media’s created about the White House. Truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
– Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook)
All the President’s Men
I’m not a DJ, but I play one on radio.
– CC Burger
Q. You’ve been divorced from Mick Jagger for about seven years now, and in that time you’ve had relationships with men older and also younger than you. Have you developed a preference?
A. Yeah, I prefer older men because they are more experienced. Sometimes they do have problems – but there’s a cure for that. Young men make you listen to Coldplay. There’s no cure for that.
– Jerry Hall, celebrity spokesmodel for Levitra, quoted in MacLean’s Magazine, March (?) 2006
In the upside-down world of barbecue, many think food is better if it’s served in a joint or a dive. Here’s a handy field guide of definitions:
- Restaurant – Matching furniture, taped music, printed menus. Accepts credit cards.
- Joint – Screened door, jukebox, beer, chalkboard menu. The cook is nicknamed Bubba. Cash only.
- Dive – Torn screened door, tattoos, beer, whiskey, flies. No menu. The cook’s real name is Bubba, and she has a prison record. You don’t tell your mama you go there.
– Southern Living – Bar-B-Que,
Our Ultimate Guide (2004)
Rock and roll used to be about sticking it to the man. Now they stick it to themselves before the man even gets there.
– John King (Gang of Four)
Q (CBC Radio), February 2011
When you tolerate intolerance, you’re not really being a liberal.
– Bill Maher to Tavis Smiley
Real Time, February 2011
Patriotism isn’t the last refuge of the scoundrel. Law school is.
– jl
You opened this can; let’s eat it all.
– Art Mullen (Nick Searcy), Justified
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?
– Al Lewis (1923(?)-2006), quoting Satchel Paige
It’s my job – bein’ a dick. It’d be weird if you liked me.
– Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), Justified
If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search…I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor…Trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense…the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.
– Nikolai Tesla, quoted in “Tesla Says Edison Was an Empiricist,” New York Times, October 19, 1931, p. 25.
I love that shit. That shit makes me hard.
– Tim Gutterson (Jacob Pitts), Justified
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
– Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.
– Terry Pratchet, Jingo
If it isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well.
– Dr. Joe Schwarcz on studying homeopathy, The Current, March 5th, 2015
People only use the word “technology” when they don’t understand how something works.
– Matthew Crawford, The Sunday Edition, May 17th, 2015
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
– H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), p.622
All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.
– I.F. Stone, In a Time of Torment, 1961-1967 (1967), p. 317
poli-tics: From the Greek poly (many), and ticks (small bloodsucking parasites).
– anonymous
If it’s got tits, tires, ttys, or tillers, it’s going to give you trouble.
– jl, standing on the shoulders of giants
I’m very much against this multiplication of tasks. [T]he telephone has to be a telephone, a calendar, a camera and everything else besides. This is dangerous nonsense, the only possible consequence of which is that thousands of our young people will be mown down on the roads because they cannot stop staring into their screens. One of my first undertakings will be to outlaw such telephone devices or allow them only for those inferior racial elements remaining in our society – for the latter I may even make them compulsory. Then they will litter the main thoroughfares of Berlin like squashed hedgehogs. So they do have their practical uses. But otherwise: utter nonsense!
– Adolf Hitler, Look Who’s Back (Timur Vermes, 2012)
I’ve skiied in The Rockies,
Walked the white sand.
Known people who could not find
Their ass with both hands.
– John Wing
Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.
– Karl Wallenda
Nitpicking Bastard 