Sons Without Fathers:
Sons without fathers sleep in meager light,
in dim consequences within
the dark rooms of night.
When growing older, they come to terms
with demons hardly aged;
they learn to fight
the wars their fathers waged.
Christian Nguyen Langworthy
“Today I got pictures taken care of me while I wasn’t paying attention!”
Shannon
"We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love,
never so helplessly
unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love."
Sigmund Freud
“Do you know to whom you are speaking now?” Woland [the Devil] asked the guest. “Do you know whom you are visiting?”
“I know,” answered the Master. “My neighbor in the insane asylum was that boy, Ivan Homeless. He told me about you.”
“Of course, of course,” replied Woland. “I had the pleasure of meeting the young man at the Patriarchs’ Ponds. He almost drove me insane, proving to me that I do not exist. But you--you believe that this is indeed I?”
“I have to believe,” said the visitor. “But of course, it would be less disturbing to regard you as the product of hallucination.
Forgive me,” the Master recollected himself.
***
Two weeks later, I was received by a young woman with eyes that squinted permanently
at her own nose from constant lying.
***
Yes, there was already a mass of information, and the investigation knew whom it had to
catch, and where. But the trouble was that it proved quite impossible to catch anyone.
Undoubtedly, someone lived in the thrice-accursed apartment Number 50. At times, the
telephone was answered either in a chattering, or in a nasal voice. Occasionally, a window
was opened, or sounds of a phonograph were heard from the apartment. Yet every time it
was visited, no one was there. Yes, apartment Number 50 was acting up, but nothing
could be done about it.
***
“No, listen, you are an intelligent woman and you were not mad . . . Are you quite certain that we visited Satan the other night?”
***
And I’ll tell you just what it is--it is your tone. You spoke the words as though you did
not recognize the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you be kind enough to
give some thought to this: what would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what
would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are cast by
objects and people. There is the shadow of my sword. But there are also shadows of
trees and living creatures. Would you like to denude the earth of all the trees and all the
living beings in order to satisfy your fancy of rejoicing in the naked light? You are a fool.
from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
Eve: I am brimming with.. hmm. Insubordination. No. What's a good thing to
brim with?
Shannon: (hasn't been listening, reads off award on wall) Mmm, "favorite
roommate."
Eve: Yes, I am brimming with roommate! Well, I guess you can't really say
that--unless you're a cannibal.
Great scene from Dr. Strangelove:
An officer needs enough change to put through a call to the President and give him
the code to stop warplanes from launching nuclear weapons on Russia by accident. After
ordering a very skeptical soldier to shoot a soda machine to get the money:
Soldier: “Do you know what’s gonna happen if you can’t get the President of the
United States on the phone?”
Officer: “What’s that?”
Soldier: “You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
(shoots machine)
“The will to power resides among the stalactites of the heart.”
***
“One evil deed missed is a loss for all eternity.”
John Gardner, Grendel
"Often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of
those is the more annoying."
Bertram Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"
“If a mime falls in a forest onto a tree, does it sound like one hand clapping if no one’s
around?”
Eve
"It went okay. I saw the Matrix and ate an animal."
Rez, on his birthday celebrations
“Mental states just... hang out. They hang out, together."
Prof. Lacy summarizing Hume's dualism. I know, I know, philosophers have
strange senses of humor...
Breaking news in scientific crime from AP Science Writer Paul Recer:
Rigby said that he and other researchers have long suspected that some of the
assumptions about how well the Sauropods could move their heads "violated a whole
group of biophysical laws."
(hee hee)
Limerick for Shannon’s Fish
Shannon, my roommie: a fish
is a least palatable dish;
it hums and it shivers
and quickly delivers
a delicate scrunch when you squish.
"If you get to know someone too deeply it increases your contempt of that person, and
you realize they're just another human being, and you HATE human beings... well, I guess
that's just me."
Eve’s misanthropy showing through
“I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.”
Marilyn Monroe
"Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest
slang of all is the slang of poets."
George Eliot
“mayish. sounds like a light strawberry mayonnaise.”
***
“i'm writing poetry into my plan files to fill that little empty drawer in my soul where
reciprocated boy affection usually goes.”
Eve in email to Jennifer Tynes
"If I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for a while;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all."
Carl Sandburg