(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
Less personal than a journal or diary, the "Commonplace Book" is a collection of random quotations, favorite authors, conversations, clippings, and bon mots. Add your own or comment on others', as you might scribble on a wall. Your entries need not serve as a Rorschach test; quotes can be silly or profound, heartfelt or just a momentary thought. Play nice. Additions will be woven into the main body, with initials to credit the contributor.
Thanks, Pat, Pamela, et al...
"What annoys me is that Spielberg is such an egomaniac these days that it has to be 'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. No, you pus-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it wouldn't kill you to put his fucking name on it." --Harlan Ellison
"The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
attributed to Samuel Johnson, later to Emerson.
(MF)
On a bathroom wall: "My mother made me a lesbian."
Scrawled underneath: "If I get her the yarn, will she make me one too?"
(MF)
Nelson Algren's Three Rules for Living:
One: Never eat in a restaurant called "Mom's".
Two: Never play cards with a man called "Doc".
Three: Don't sleep with anyone who has more problems than you do.
(MF)
"The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit." -- John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee's credo for a knight-errant's banner)
(M.F.)
My favorite epitaph, the one I hope to earn, inshallah, is Falstaff's:
"Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. "
(the usual saying is "he sleeps in Abraham's bosom'; great-souled Falstaff prefered King Arthur, and so do I.)
(MF)
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- Groucho Marx (PR)
"In one hour of operation, the average gas mower emits the same amout of climate-changing hydrocarbons as a 1992 Ford Explorer driven over 23,000 miles."
-- Co-op America's Real Money, June/July 2002, adapted from The Organic Suburbanite by Warren Schultz, Rodale, 2001.(PR)
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.
--Duke Ellington (PR)
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.
--Hanlon's Razor (PR)
"Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws
of nature." - George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra
(RAH)
"Oh, Goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer!" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(JDM)
(PJ) --Steve Benson, The Arizona Star
“[Tolstoy’s] opinions about syphilis … are not merely disreputable but they unmask an ignorant man who hasn’t taken the trouble in the course of his long life to read two or three books written by specialists.... Tolstoy calls doctors scoundrels and flaunts his ignorance of important matters because he is a second Diogenes whom no one will report to the police or denounce to the newspapers. So to hell with the philosophy of the great men of the world.... Reason and justice tell me that there is more love for mankind in electricity and steam than in chastity and abstinence from meat” --Chekhov (in letters)
9 comments:
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. - Groucho Marx
“In one hour of operation, the average gas mower emits the same amout of climate-changing hydrocarbons as a 1992 Ford Explorer driven over 23,000 miles.” Co-op America's Real Money, June/July 2002, adapted from The Organic Suburbanite by Warren Schultz, Rodale, 2001.
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline. -Duke Ellington
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity. -Hanlon's Razor
I realize this will sound snarky and "shrill", but I'm becoming convinced that conservatives do this kind of thing because they have trouble dealing with situations and institutions that they don't completely control.
-- quoting a blog writer, "Linnaeus" at http://mousewords.blogspot.com/2004/09/college-republicans-continue-to.html
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor – by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it."
-- Raymond Chandler, "The Simpole Art of Murder"
"The Semites' idea of nationality was the independence of clans and villages, and their ideal of national union was episodic combined resistance to an intruder. Constructive policies, an organized state, an extended empire, were not so much beyond their sight as hateful in it. They were fighting to get rid of Empire, not to win it."
-- T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia
Don’t be that boring guy at the comic shop who says “Yeah, I had that idea 10 years ago.” Be the guy who can say, “I had that idea 10 years ago and it was rejected by every comic company in the world and that’s why I am the hopeless alcoholic you see before you.”
- Mike Sangiacomo
I don't know what is up with people who have found God, but they seem really insecure about God's continued approval, like He is their quasi-abusive boyfriend or neglectful Dad or something, so they have to keep thanking Him every five seconds. Klosterman thanks God for helping him to write a shortish, go-nowhere, cutesy book about a brief road trip he took to rock stars' death sites. This is kind of like R. Kelly thanking God for helping him to write a song called "Sex Weed," except less hilarious.
-- Emily G. at http://www.blacktable.com/emilyg050721.htm
WEARING KITTY EARS: One of my best scores at Book Expo America was not, in fact, a book, or any sort of reading material whatsoever. Instead, it was a pair of kitty ears, a cheap little plastic headband with felt feline protuberances that turns me instantly from sad, depressed, lonely girl into fun-loving, happy-go-lucky-wannabe-extra from Josie and the Pussycats. That may be overstating the case, but I find it truly impossible to be down while wearing these ears. Others must think so too, because everywhere my friend and I went at the otherwise relatively sober convention, publishers, authors and booksellers wanted to know where they too could get kitty ears (in the children's section, of course, though I think they're perfectly suited to adults as well). They're quite fun to wear out and about, and if you wear them long enough, your head starts to feel funny when you take them off. Kitty ears are a very simple and effective pick-me-up, as well as a surefire way to get people to talk to you. These days I'm all about cheap and natural highs, and my kitty ears certainly fit the bill, so much so that I will probably be sporting them all summer. -- Rachel Kramer Bussel
I never tell the story of having been bullied, except as a case study for the guidance of others...When American students asked me many years later what I thought about the Columbine massacre, I horriļ¬ed them by saying, “We’re shooting back now.” I didn’t condone mass murder, but I understood it.
--Les Murray in The Paris Review
We hate faux cool in our video games. We hate marketing departments, image consultants, shit games with Underground or Street in the title, and computer science majors from Germany tackling hip-hop "culture". We want to roll them all up in a rug and beat them with a hammer.
-- "Geeks on Stun" weblog at http://www.geekonstun.com/mt/archives/2005_05.html
Sent to the doctor
Shot full of holes
Nurse cried,
"Save his soul."
I'm a back-door man
I'm a back-door man
What the mens don't know
The little girls understand.
-- T. Model Ford
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