"I already know enough about sex."
innocent little Sue
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
Emile Zola
"It takes a long time to understand nothing."
Edward Dahlberg (whereas I thought it only took 4 years)
"Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are."
Henry Fielding
"Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees."
J. J. Furnas
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
R. Buckminster Fuller
"I'm about to go meet some friends to go view a performance artist. He's setting up a box outside, and he's going to stand in it for 24 hours, moving VERY slowly (like a couple inches an hour). On one wall of the box, he's going to have a picture of his mother, and on the other side will be his father. It sounds very interesting. He used to date one of my friends, and she said he's been practicing moving really slowly. He, he, he. That's kind of funny...."
Erin’s recent email update. Hmm....
Sue: What if you find out he's wearing leopard-print underwear?
Jess: Hey, I wear leopard-print underwear!
’Nia: What if he's wearing your leopard-print underwear?
Jess: That'd be pretty scary, because they're dirty!
(collectively, everybody): WOAAHHH!!!
"Horoscope for Taurus: In my long career, I've channeled a wide variety of spirits neglected by other psychics. When I ran for Santa Cruz City Council, I served as medium for Thomas Jefferson. While working at a lesbian think tank, I did Gertrude Stein. I've also provided astral links for Barbie the doll, a pig named Porker, and a very special rock I call Fifi at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. This week, Taurus, I break new ground, as I channel your inner teenager. Here's the message: I WANT NONSTOP HOT SLOPPY LOVE NOW!"
Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology
Charles: We're putting the soup on our plates like this because apparently Eve has cooties. It must be a case left over from 3rd grade.
Eve: I didn't get them until recently.
Charles: You're a late cootie bloomer. There must be medical documentation of that somewhere.
Eve: Yeah, I used to play doctor a lot.
Charles: Oh really? Who were the lucky patients?
Eve: Sorry, I signed a patient/doctor non-disclosure agreement.
-History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
-The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
-That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
-What? Mr Deasy asked.
-A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
James Joyce, Ulysses
A conversation about lesbians, Jonathan's famed cheesecake-making ability (a surefire chick magnet), and a guy making pizza in the dorm at 2am ended on this note:
Sue: If that [pizza making] guy comes back through, send him up... there may be a little surprise waiting for him.
Jonathan: Wow, I should make a cheesecake! Then I'll get lesbians!
Sue: Jonathan, lesbians don't like boys!
Jonathan: They like cheesecake!
"Let's go out and dance our ass off! ('cause I don't know about ya'll, but I could definitely use LESS ass... and dancing is way more fun than the stair climber, plus I think it's easier to pick up guys dancing than on a stair climber, plus the CLC closes at 10 so hey you don't even have to choose between the stair climber and dancing because you can do both and dance ALL your ass off!) But then again ass-less people look kinda different... So I'm going to opt to skip the stair climber, just to be on the safe ass side."
Emily
"Why are Cubans voting Republican? I would think since they're a minority and all... Must have been that Elian Gonzales kid. They should have shot him when they had the chance."
Philip, the Russian foreign exchange student
Description of an actual personal homepage listed on Yahoo:
"Phillips, Jay and Cathy--Mardi Gras madness, trains and train wrecks, Rush Limbaugh, Coca-Cola, West Virginia Photo Gallery, Star Trek, Greek nude beaches."
(That sounds like a recipe for disaster right there, buddy.)
"How do you spell masochistic?"
Perryn
While watching a special on underground salt mining:
"Wow, that looks really cool. They should make a church entirely of salt, and the people could go down there to worship God and lick the pews."
Kalman
And now, a special section of quotes attributed to George W. Bush!
Please let me know if any of these are misattributed.
"People don't get a sense of my ability to relate to people."
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between mother and child."
"Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy--but that could change."
"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
"Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things."
"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
"The future will be better tomorrow."
"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world."
"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."
"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
"Public speaking is very easy."
"I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican"
"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
"When I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in LA, my answer has been direct & simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."
"Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it."
"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
"The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that George Bush may or may not make."
"We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made."
"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."
* * *
"I walked in the rain for a while last night. It's the first time in a while that I've gone out to chill with Rhodes' environment--fall smells and feels nice, and it happens to bring out the best in this campus. The amber light diffused throughout the rainy skies. The sky was, in fact, pink-coloured like muddy pigs (to use some Saki terminology). It's puddle-wonderful but it's definitely not spring, and I was feeling the lack of queer old balloonmen whistling far and wee (to use some e.e. cummings terminology). It was very like a whale. Well, let's stop at Shakespeare. Another nice thing was that it was quiet--just a few random people struggling back from parties were to be seen slowly splashing through the parking lot. You'd be amazed at how many people say hi to you when you're all wet out in the pinky rainy goodness of the late evening. Even the weird, soft, unnatural 24-hour glow of Clough is mitigated and beautified by the weather. It appears Clough has redeeming value after all: it is not a complete monstrosity of the modern architectural age, but in this capacity serves as a sort of campus nightlight. All it needs is a funny little army of men to light and extinguish the lamps (to use St-Exupery terminology). Sorry. Anyway, walking on these nights shouldn't be used for thinking, but for erasing thoughts and memories, blocking out and rearranging things in your mind. I won't claim that it has brought me to any temporary nirvana. I wish we had a few more rainshowers like last night's during the year, however, because it is good to get rid of that backlog of thought and feeling that builds up, keeping real feelings dormat on lovely melancholy-looking evenings and happiness locked up when it is sunny."
-
"There is a little 7-language (other than English) dictionary with the most common phrases in Portugese, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and German. I found it in the college bookstore today. It was very cute, but it ceased to amuse me when I started to really consider how useful it would be to me--it wasn't all that comprehensive, and I don't think I'd use it all that much. So I put it back on the shelf. Lo, it is a sad day when little trinkets of polyglotteny cannot charm a few dollars from my bank account."
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an email I sent to my roommate:
"you are so silly : ) you left the music on but turned off the lights when you left. it made me think of springtime and hitler and flowers painted to look like quiet pastoral scenes. it was rather like walking into the fried gardens of babylon and shooting people with a paintball gun once inside. it was like eating ink cakes and sneaking into the icecapades, or like using a duck to clean your car. it was like being on tv with matt marcotte and laughing at everything he says. it was like trying to braid together the shoelaces on three blind kids. it was like throwing scissors at the stars, or coughing on the president, or donating tweezers to pbs. yes. see you around, roommate."
my plan file and email ramblings
"I wouldn't say it's depraved behavior, it's just... horses."
Jake from ethics class; context removed to make it funnier