Human moments are stolen away by a thousand petty impediments.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine.

George Carlin

For the black fumes which rise in your mind, I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. Change of place is useful...

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as the essence of bullshit.

Harry G. Frankfurt, as quoted in Defining Bullshit, Slate.

...metabolism sets the pace for myriad biological processes. An animal with a high metabolic rate processes energy quickly, so it can pump its heart quickly, grow quickly, and reach maturity quickly. Unfortunately, that animal also ages and dies quickly....There is a universal biological clock..."but it ticks in units of energy, not units of time."

"Life on the Scales," Erica Klarreich, Science News, February 12, 2005

No one ever knows what's next,
but they always do it.

George Carlin

Hell burns within my breast....
I praise and love the one who makes my fire so hot.

Lorenzino de Medici, from Madrigal

"Be still, and know that I am God." - Psalm 46.10

Rice in a Beggar's Bowl

Of all my thousand choices tonight
I walk into the snowy woods and wait.

Snow rests in peace
on each bough where it has fallen.
The branches are content to bow
like servants with their burdens,
as are all living things content
to wait.

I stand, hands in my pockets,
and let my life fall like snow
in the empty bowl of this meadow;
my mind becomes a slender branch.

My heart settles on the silent earth.

Attend to this moment
until it is enough.

Pastor Steve

The martini according to Wikipedia.

Reading "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" -- very funny.

Try these online intros to Wodehouse:

Some online texts.

Some online quotes.

Amazon.com PG Wodehouse search.

The path of human destiny cannot but appall him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small commentaries to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

A man must live, and if he precludes himself from the support furnished by the establishment, will probably be reduced to very wicked shifts to maintain himself.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war — death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.

Chris Hedges, "On War" The New York Review (December 16, 2004).

Like sex, bathing, sleeping, and drinking, the effects of food don't last. The patterns are repeated but finite. Life is a near-death experience, and our devious minds will do anything to make it interesting.

Jim Harrison, "A Really Big Lunch," The New Yorker, September 6, 2004.

If he would just take a plunge (always the Realtor’s fondest wish for mankind), banish fear, let loose the reins, think that instead of having suffered error and loss he’d survived them and that today is the first day of his new life, then he’d be fine and dandy. In other words, embrace in full the permanent period of life, live not as though he were going to die tomorrow but as though he might live.

Richard Ford, The Shore, The New Yorker, August 2, 2004

Wartime Washington

Today the maples are in flames,
The breeze so cool,
I need body armor.
The world is at war,
No truce, no quarter.

The words of an old song
Go through my brain.
How did I get here?
Whose life is this anyway?

Fuck it.
It doesn’t matter.
Today the maples are in flames.
And I have body armor.

GMG

Sky Blue

At 7 am
The sun was barely up.
Three hours later,
The shadows were still long on Rock Creek.
The sky shined a perfect blue,
With a brilliance so true
It juxtaposed
The trees –
Greens, reds, browns and golds
Already a bit of a cacophony –
Showing off the earth’s odd colors.

The artist who painted this picture,
However uncaring of life within the frame,
Set the stage with great beauty.
What more can we reasonably ask
Of any deity.

GMG

A man’s usefulness
depends upon living up to
his ideals
in so far as he can.

A great democracy
has got to be progressive or
it will soon cease
to be great or a democracy.


Teddy Roosevelt