Quote of the Day

No one worth possessing

Can be quite possessed.

- Sara Teasdale

Quote of the Day

The most effective form of birth control I know is spending the day with my kids.

- Jill Bensley

Quote of the Day

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

- Nancy Astor

Quote of the Day

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

- James Madison

Quote of the Day

The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.
- Frank Zappa

Quote of the Day

I'm gonna live forever, or die trying.
- Joseph Heller

Quote of the Day

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbour.
- Walter Bagehot

Quote of the Day

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
- Jean Kerr

We apologize for the inconvenience...

Due to a soulcrushing lack of travel, this blog has slowly turned into a pure quote machine lately. That was not my intention, so I'mma try to liven things up a bit here. First, the good news... I've finally decided to at least use my time as an unemployed slob to try and lose some weight and get my blood sugar levels under 7.0 again.

Score success on both counts, as I had 6.9 at the doc's yesterday (against 8.9 three monts ago) and weighed in at 112.5 kg this morning. I hope to be back at my lowest in over ten years by reaching the much glorified 106.4 kg, which I attained in September 2011. Yes, money is not the only thing I've squandered these past 18 months...

On the downside I'm now in the market looking for a job. I'm a teacher by training, so that's where I'm looking first, and I've decided to try and go back to my old high school in the fall (I'm desperately looking for their job ads in the local paper every day... they're late). They've got a new principal and are in the process of rebuilding, so maybe things will be better than they were the last few years of my previous employment there. Also, there's nothing like a 3 year break to get the old motivation going again... wheeeeee!

Quote of the Day

What we don't need to know for achievement, we need to know for our pleasure. Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
- William Safire

Quote of the Day

Personalization: the automatic tailoring of sites and messages to the individuals viewing them so that we can feel that somewhere there's a piece of software that loves us for who we are.
- David Weinberger

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Truth never damages a cause that is just.
- Mahatma Gandhi

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There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
- Richard Lederer

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Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering truth.
- Gertrude Atherton

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A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.
- Margaret Sanger

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Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson

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If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
- Mark Twain

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I haven’t been wrong since 1961, when I thought I made a mistake.
- Bob Hudson

Quote of the Day

When you're up to your neck in shit, all you can do is sing.
- Samuel Beckett

Quote of the Day

Christianity teaches you to love your enemies. If you love your enemies, what value does that place on love?
- Marilyn Manson

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I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.
- Neil Armstrong

Quote of the Day

The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power.
- Woodrow Wilson

Quote of the Day

A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table.
- Jean Kerr

Quote of the Day

An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
- Orlando A. Battista

Quote of the Day

Most people tire of a lecture in 10 minutes; clever people can do it in 5. Sensible people never go to lectures at all.
- Stephen Butler Leacock

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Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hand, he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.
- O. Henry "The Octopus Marooned"

Quote of the Day

Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Boy, n.: A noise with dirt on it.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

After all is said and done, a lot more is usually said than done.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never tried taking candy from a baby.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

If all the envy in the world could be converted to energy, it would more than exceed its known oil reserves.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

The woman cries before the wedding; the man after.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

God is a man. That’s why he doesn’t listen and never phones back.
- Jo Brand

Quote of the Day

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
- Edgar Allan Poe

Quote of the Day

One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.
- Nancy Astor

Quote of the Day

Variato delectat
[Variation is pleasing]
- Euripides

Quote of the Day

Misanthropes need people; without a steady supply, the misanthrope cannot fully apply his art.
- Polly Whitney

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Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.
- Benjamin Franklin

Quote of the Day

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
- William Somerset Maugham

Quote of the Day

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
- Sigmund Freud

Quote of the Day

"Some people play hard to get. I play hard to want."
- Andrew Dice Clay in "Ford Fairlane"

Quote of the Day

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken

Quote of the Day

The rule is perfect: In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
- Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

Hated by fools and fools to hate
Be that my motto and my fate.
- Jonathan Swift

Quote of the Day

Ish mah 42nd birthday today.

Be wise with speed,
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
- Edward Young

Quote of the Day

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.
- George McGovern

Quote of the Day

Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

A penny saved is ridiculous.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

I'll get a life when someone demonstrates it would be superior to what I have now.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

If a train station is where a train stops, what's a workstation?
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Seminars, n.: From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident it makes you wonder about history.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Fairy tales: Horror stories for children to get them used to reality.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

There are two sides to every divorce: yours and the shithead’s.
- Unknown

Quote of the Day

Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded - which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument.
- George H. Smith

Quote of the Day

When it becomes more difficult to suffer than to change, you will change.
- Dr. Robert Anthony

Quote of the Day

Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.
- Michael Gelb

Quote of the Day

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
- Oscar Wilde

Quote of the Day

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Quote of the Day

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
- Alexander Pope

Some facebook stats

Some numbers to close out the year... I have 120 "friends" over on Facebook. Of these, 45 are women while 75 are men (assuming they all are who they say they are). I have personally met 115 of them, while 5 are accepted more or less on faith. They could be aliens or figments of my imagination for all I know.

There is a surprisingly high number of Lutefisk eaters among them; 93. There are 27 unwashed, garlicky foreigners out to get Norwegian jobs & women; 15 from the USA, 2 from England, 2 from Ukraina and 2 from Sweden. Canada, Israel, Poland, Russia, Switzerland and Thailand have 1 each.

I wonder how much will have changed a year from now.

Quote of the Day

Not to know the events which happened before one was born, that is to remain always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
- Cicero

Quote of the Day

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that WE are the ones that need help?
- Dan Barker

Quote of the Day

Don't eat yellow snow.
- Frank Zappa

Quote of the Day

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
- Adam Smith

Quote of the Day

It is the individual’s task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities... interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible.
- Carl Jung

Quote of the Day

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we can not entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
- Edward Abbey

Quote of the Day

A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!' cried a cheerful voice. 'Bah!' said Scrooge. 'Humbug!'
- Charles Dickens (from "A Christmas Carol")

Quote of the Day

What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer... If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly, 'every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!'
- Charles Dickens (from "A Christmas Carol")

Quote of the Day

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.
- Hubert Humphrey

Happy Festivus!

A happy Festivus is heartily wished to all readers (both of you)!

Quote of the Day

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
- Thomas Jefferson

Quote of the Day

I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead for twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.
- Ronald Reagan

Quote of the Day

"I know what you’re thinking... Did I fire six shots or only five? To tell you the truth, I forgot it myself in all this excitement. This here’s a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it can blow your head clean off. Now, you must ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?"
- Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry"

Quote of the Day

You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.
- Al Capone

Quote of the Day

It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law.
- Malcolm X

Quote of the Day

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
- William S. Burroughs

Quote of the Day

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.
- Christopher Marlowe (from "The Jew of Malta")

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What do I care what impression I make on people? It's because we waste our lives caring about what others think that most of us remain morons.
- Colin Wilson

Quote of the Day

If God doesn’t destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
- Jay Leno

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I never work out. If God had meant us to do, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
- Joan Rivers

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Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?" Then a voice answers "Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up."
- Charles Schulz

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The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
- Benjamin Mays

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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill

Quote of the Day

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.
- Tom Robbins

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The successful people are the ones that can think up stuff for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
- Don Marquis

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Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.
- John Simon

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I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
- Carl Sandburg

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"Charles, get the rifle out. We’re being fucked."
- Steve MacKintosh in "Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels"

Quote of the Day

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
- Dean Acheson

Quote of the Day

I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day.
- Lyndon B. Johnson

Quote of the Day

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Quote of the Day

Beware of programmers who carry screw drivers.
- Leonard Brandwein