making the best of your situation
"The more people I meet, the happier I become. From the meanest creature one departs wiser, richer, more conscious of one's blessings. Even you will have added to my store."
- Pozzo, Waiting for Godot
April 25, 2008
March 5, 2008
now gods, rise up for bastards
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune, - often the surfeit
of our own behavior, - we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star!"
January 29, 2008
right back where you started
"Without imagination we are nothing, and without bold ventures and risks nothing great of permanence is attainable."
- from the introduction to Jack Chalker's Lords of the Middle Dark
December 3, 2007
where do dreams go when they die?
Stef: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop! You can't do this. Because these are somebody else's wishes. They're somebody else's dreams.
Mouth: Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here? This was my dream, my wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back.
- the Goonies
November 26, 2007
moving forward
"In the service of duty there was never any acceptable reason for denial."
- Cort, Stephen King's Drawing of the Three
October 18, 2007
a different kind of inferno
"I'm not even supposed to be here!"
- Dante's Lament, Kevin Smith's Clerks
October 10, 2007
you're more like a game show host
"We believe the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some sort of dodge or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions highly questionable."
- Dean Yager, Ghostbusters
October 8, 2007
motivation and drive
"You don't work hard because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life."
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
September 28, 2007
there is life outside your [trailer]
Brian: Princeton?Princeton: Yeah?
Brian: Listen buddy, nobody has seen you for two weeks! What is up with that?
Princeton: I went to work for a temp agency, and they fired me for being too depressing on the phone. I maxxed out my cards, I am two months behind in rent, I totally messed up my personal life... Oh - and Brian? I still haven't found my purpose.
Brian: All right. Get off your ass and stop worrying!
August 15, 2007
globalization
"For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio in his hands and an ad for Coca-cola on the camel's back. I am not ridiculing this, nor am I shedding an intellectual tear... I see it rather as... proof that SOMETHING is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when anything is possible."
- Václav Havel, The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World
August 8, 2007
still bad
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, ever 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 Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one thing that puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire. Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel. Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of reach.
Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you've got."
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
July 18, 2007
thought for the day
"Optimism can make you look stupid, but cynicism always makes you look cynical."
- Calum Fisher
Found on the inside of an "Honest Tea" cap purchased today at the Central Market where I am eating my lunch. I am still trying to decide which of the two listed options is better... or worse, as the case may be. A matter of interpretation and preference, I suppose. I can only retaliate with the words of Croaker from Glen Cook's Shadow Games:
"Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent."
June 27, 2007
the road ahead
"There was a highway ahead - a hidden highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might disclose themselves to him if he was clever... and if he was lucky. He had left his home in the light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great adventure."
- Stephen King, The Wastelands
June 6, 2007
home sweet home
"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space."
- Hamlet: Act II, Scene 2
Thank heavens my sense of humor is still intact.
The locals remember when these trailers really were a place to crash at night after a long day of hauling discarded palm fronds out of the wreckage that used to be your living room. Now I complain that the distribution for the air-conditioning is irregular, and that the temperature can be freezing at one end of the building while tropical at the other. I guess what one really needs is a sense of perspective. I have the fishtank up and running, and I am putting in additional shelving. Rent is cheap, and I get free laundry, power, and water.
This does not change the fact that someday I would like to own a house with a kitchen large enough for two.
April 19, 2007
facing facts
March 14, 2007
science!
"A scientist, like a warrior, must cherish no view; for a view is the outcome of intellectual processes - whereas creativity, like swordsmanship, requires not neutrality or indifference: but to be of no mind whatever."
- Buckaroo Banzai, as chronicled by Earl Mac Rauch
March 4, 2007
moving forward
"Most quests for unusual goals are motivated by the conviction that the end is attainable if only the correct combination of fortune and persistence can be struck."
- Richard Fortey, Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution
January 19, 2007
progress?
"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud."
- Émile Zola
December 29, 2006
something in denmark
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
- Marcellus, Hamlet (I, iv, 90)
For all intents and purposes, my laptop is dead. While I may yet go in search of a third opinion, two separate IT-professionals have concluded that some component on the motherboard has gone wrong and leads to an increasing series of internal errors that eventually stack up and result in the unusual freezing behavior approximately five to ten minutes after power-up. As this is a laptop, single components can not be easily removed and replaced, and to repair it would allegedly require replacing the entire motherboard - at the cost of nearly $750.
For twice the price, I can have a brand new laptop with four to six times the power and ability.
This time, I will remember to purchase the extended warrantee that would have covered my issues with motherboard or heat-sink or the boot-sector on the hard-drive or whichever of my components has failed, resulting in this crash. While my family has been universally satisfied with Apple products, and have never had so critical a failure - it appears that laptops are somewhat more fragile, and more prone to damage and destruction. I suppose I should have expected it - given the amount of thumping and bumping the poor beast takes (took?) as I carry it everywhere - and through all kinds of weather.
My laptop is dead. Long live my laptop.
July 18, 2006
gonzo day
"When the going gets weird, the weird go pro."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Happy birthday, Mr. Thompson. You're an inspiration to rebels and truthseekers everywhere.
March 1, 2006
a reminder
"I suspect that under that cynical shell, you're at heart a sentimentalist."
- Captain Renault, Casablanca
November 16, 2005
what you need... is a diploma
"I'll not be just a nuffin, my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain..."
- The Scarecrow, The Wizard of Oz
November 14, 2005
motivational speaker
"Who cares about your lonely soul?
We're striving towards a higher goal!"
- Red & Black, Les Miserables
October 27, 2005
where we're going
"Back off, man - I'm a scientist!"
- Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters
September 11, 2004
"Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh, this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline."
- REM's remarkably prescient "End of the World as We Know it (and I feel fine)"
September 11, 2003
excess ain't rebellion
You're drinking what they're selling.
Your self-destruction doesn't hurt them.
Your chaos won't convert them.
They're so happy to rebuild it.
You'll never really kill it.
- CAKE's "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle"
August 16, 2002
fight
"You don't just lie out there and stare at the stars, Hawks! You'll just get rain in your face. You reach out and grab them sons of bitches and you live!"
- Arnold Nagy, Jack Chalker's Masks of the Martyrs
March 22, 2002
freedom of expression
"Freedom has two parts: potential and resolution; as metaphor has two parts: form and interpretation. Of course, the two are intertwined. Metaphor lines the road to freedom, as symbols and words are the bricks and mortar of meaning. Freedom is being the bricoleur, the mason."
- Durandal, Jason Jones' Marathon
February 13, 2002
Persistence
"Persistence. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, 'Press on,' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
- Calvin Coolidge