Me to a co-worker: “But would you expect me to have a mustache and goatee? No – that’s why it’s a good disguise!”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself because someone said you’re going to die. I got an idea that’s gonna help us both. Now it is dangerous, and there’s a very good chance you will die. But if you don’t die, then we win. I don’t know about you, but things have really sucked for me lately, and I could use a victory. So let’s get one, dude. Let’s get this car started. Let’s look death in the face and say ‘whatever, man.’ Let’s make our own luck.”
– Hurley to Charlie on ‘Lost’
I just watched this week’s episode of Lost. I love that the car they’re trying to start is a Microbus, only with the Dharma logo in place of the VW.
“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things…every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.” — Matt Santos, The West Wing
“Luckily, I happen to have a Bible laying around this house, because even though I’m not a Christian, I was an English major, and it is important to Know Your Ancient Mythologies if you are reading poetry.”
— Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon.net
thankyouverymuch.
1. Why can’t they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going, “Who’d you call a faggot?” — Jon Stewart
2. The one bonus of not lifting the ban on gays in the military is that the next time the government mandates a draft we can all declare homosexuality instead of running off to Canada. –Lorne Bloch
3. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. –From the tombstone of a gay Vietnam veteran
4. The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision. –Lynn Lavner
5. My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I’m giving them my share. –Rita Mae Brown
6. Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons. –Letter to the Editor, The Advocate
7. You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight. –Barry Goldwater
8. If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work: “Hello. Can’t work today, still queer.” –Robin Tyler
9. Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? –Ernest Gaines
10. War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays. Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting? –The Value of Families
11. I’d rather be black than gay because when you’re black you don’t have to tell your mother. –Charles Pierce, 1980
12. That word “lesbian” sounds like a disease. And straight men know because they’re sure that they’re the cure. –Denise McCanles
13. As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children. –Anita Bryant, 1977
14. If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters. –Anita Bryant
15. The radical right is so homophobic that they’re blaming global warming on the AIDS quilt. –Dennis Miller
16. Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an antigay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won’t be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole. –Judy Carter
17. My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. –W. Somerset Maugham
18. Drag is when a man wears everything a lesbian won’t. –Author Unknown
19. I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated, “all my Homosexual patients are quite sick” – to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients.” –Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist
20. When it comes to exploring the sea of love, I prefer buoys. –Andrew G. Dehel
21. If male homosexuals are called “gay,” then female homosexuals should be called “ecstatic.” –Shelly Roberts
22. My mother took me to a psychiatrist when I was fifteen because she thought I was a latent homosexual. There was nothing latent about it. –Amanda Bearse
23. Some women can’t say the word Lesbian…even when their mouth is full of one. –Kate Clinton
24. No matter how far in or out of the closet you are, you still have a next step. –Author Unknown
25. It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It’s like disapproving of rain. –Francis Maude
26. The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody. –Rita Mae Brown
27. ‘You could move.’ –Abigail Van Buren, “Dear Abby,” in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood
"I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid."
— Dorothy Parker
"Women are cursed, and men are the proof."
— Rosanne Barr
"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base."
— Dave Barry
"I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky, but there’s never any gum under any of them."
— Emo Philips
Richard Feynman’s famous conclusion to his report on the shuttle Challenger accident, which arose again in the Columbia accident, is “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
[cribbed from Edward Tufte.]
Yeah, no shit. Someone should point this out to Bush, tout de suite.
Maureen Dowd on Dick Cheney:
“In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.”
“Self-control!” Repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
Before they blamed the “breakdown of the family” on gay people, they used to blame it on interracial marriage. Of course the character quoted–Tom Buchanan–was running around cheating on his wife, but only breaks out this diatribe when his wife is in love with someone else. Fitzgerald called out this hypocrisy in 1925, and we’re still having it stuck down our throats 81 years later.
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.
…
One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.