dimmitjam

A list of stuff that I wonder about, in no particular order:

1.  Things that irritate me:

• Public double doors with one of them locked.
• The phrase, “Have a good day”
• Waitresses who won’t slice the toast clear through
• A Porsche parked in two spaces, so it doesn’t get dinged
• Bad drivers (Utah and Tennessee, please take note)
• Rap music (It’s getting better – I may have to delete this, one day)

2.  Years ago, I made a deal with the Devil.  He promised that I would never be really destitute; that there would always at least be food on the table.  In return, I promised that I would never do anything truly important.  So far, the arrangement has worked out well for both of us.

3.  Possible titles for hit Country Western songs:

• If I Were A Miner, You’d Be My Pick
• If I Were A Bus Driver, You’d Be My Token Lover
• If I Were A Janitor, I’d Want To Sweep With You
• If Love Were Oil, I’d Be About A Quart Low

4.  Opening sentence for a book I want to write, someday:  “I looked across the crowded bar, and her eyes met mine.  The music in the background was very low – nothing above Middle C.”

5.  “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, sit right down here, next to me.”       -Alice Roosevelt Longworth

6. Possible money-making ideas:

• Kahlua flavored envelopes
• Invent a way to get airline wheels to start turning before they hit the ground.  It will save a fortune that presently goes up in puffs of blue smoke.
• Enter the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes at least one more time.

7.  I have heard that the Chinese ideograph for the word “crisis” consists of two symbols together – “danger” and “opportunity”.  In the West, we tend to forget the “opportunity” half of the thing.

8.  “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exists and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”  -William Shakespeare

9.  Another first sentence for a book:  “The woman languidly skulking at the far end of the bar, in the short, black, clinging dress may not have been guilty, but to my trained eye, it was clear she was never innocent.”

10.  (written on 1/12/85):  There have been two interesting stories in the news lately.  The first was Baby Faye, who received a baboon heart transplant.  There was a minor controversy regarding whether or not it was moral to sacrifice the life of an animal for the life of a human.  General consensus eventually said that it was.  The second story was of a gorilla in Woodside, CA., named Coco.  As an experiment, they had managed to actually teach Coco a 500 word vocabulary in sign language and were able to converse with her.  The news story involved Coco’s crying at the news of the death of her pet kitten.  I wonder how it would have shaped public opinion, if we had taught 500 words to Baby Faye’s baboon and asked it’s permission before giving it’s heart to a human.

11.  Sumus Quod Sumus – We are what we are.

12.  Never spit if you expectorate.

13.  There was a lightning strike early today. Negotiations continue, but there will be no more lightening until this thing is settled.  Film at Eleven.

14.  I read that in 1987, 350,000 people visited Walden Pond.  That means an average of 959 people were able to find solace there on any given day, assuming they could find a spot for it.  Henry David Thoreau would be thrilled.

15.  “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.”  -Keats (Ode On An Urn)

16.  If Spring Byington married Orson Bean, she would be Spring Bean.  If Tuesday Weld married Joe Friday and then divorced him and married Billy Sunday, she would then be Tuesday Friday Sunday.  What if Tatum O’Neil married Art Tatum?  If Betty Crocker married Orville Reddenbocher, she would be Betty Crocker Reddenbocher.

17.  Possible name for a collection of baroque Christmas music:  “Bach Humbug”.

18  A favorite toast of Herb Caen (late San Francisco Chronicle columnist):  “Here’s to the roses and lilies in bloom, you in my arms and I in your room, a door that is locked, a key that is lost, a bird and a bottle and a bed badly tossed, and a night that is 50 years long.”

19.  Aristophanes on clouds:  “They really are the only gods, you know.  All the rest are rubbish.”

20  If one encountered a middle Eastern holy man, who had a penchant for Baroque music, would one properly refer to that man as a “Hayden Sikh”?

21.  Quid rides?  Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur – “Why do you laugh?  Change the name, and the story is told of you.”

22.  Is it possible that motorcycle helmet laws ultimately damage the gene pool?

23.  “Well, if I don’t succeed, I have succeeded, and that’s enough; succeeded in my youth, the only time when much success is needed; and my success produced what I, in sooth, cared most about; it need not now be readed-  What e’re it was, ’twas mine;  I’ve paid, in truth, of late, the penalty of such success, but have not learn’d to wish it any less.”  -Lord Byron

24. “…so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.”  -Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

25.  As a society, we tend to feel sorry for blind people and make fun of deaf people.  I wonder how we made that decision.  It makes no sense.

26.  Why do we write things down and type things up?

27.  “…of all appeals – although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, or beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling – no method’s more sure at moments to take hold of the best feelings of mankind, which grow more tender, as we every day behold, than that all-softening, overpowering knell, the tocsin of the soul – the dinner bell.”     -Lord Byron

28.  “Hold fast…”   Phillipians 2:14-16

29.  “Question with boldness.  Hold to the truth.  Speak without fear.”            -Glenn Beck

30. “I leapt headlong into the sea and thereby became much better acquainted with the sounds, the quicksands and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and piped a silly pipe and took tea and comfortable advice.”     Yeats

31. “Some kinder casuists are pleased to say, in nameless print – that I have no devotion; but set those persons down with me to pray, and you shall see who has the properest notion of getting into Heaven the shortest way;  my altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars – all that spring from the Great Whole, who hath produced, and will receive the soul.”  -Lord Byron

32.  “Be nice to nerds.  Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”  -Bill Gates

33.  “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit…what a ride!’”  -Hunter S. Thompson

34.  “I like nonsense.  It wakes up the brain cells.”   -Dr. Seuss

35.  “Anyone who thinks sitting in a church can make you a Christian must also think sitting in a garage can make you a car.”   -Garrison Keillor

36.  A few days ago, I watched a TV scene about the execution of a bad guy.  They showed a close-up of the doctor inserting the needle in his arm, as he lay on the gurney and before sticking him, the doctor actually swabbed the area with an alcohol pad.  You gotta wonder what he was thinking.  Infection?

37.  How is it that “fat chance” and “slim chance” can mean the same thing?

38.  Do you realize that there are statements in the English language that can be spoken, but not written.  Like this one:  “In the English language, there are three “two’s”.  (Two’s?  Too’s?  To’s?  How do you write that?)

39.  When we speak of God, as being “Omniscient”, I wonder if we really know what we are talking about.  Can God create a boulder that is too big for him to lift?  Can he lift it?

40.  “One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.”  —Virginia Woolf

41.  Maybe we should all get together, sometime, and figure out a shorter word for “abbreviate”.

42.  “The instruction we find in books is like fire.  We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” -Voltaire

43.  I wonder if the protesters of tomorrow will ever figure out how to do a really spectacular e-book burning?

44.  “An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or, in extreme cases he may add his toes, and lump the rest.  I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not as a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”

-Thoreau

45.  You know you are out of touch, when you can sit in your doctor’s waiting room, thumb through a recent copy of People magazine and realize that you don’t know who most of the people in the photos are.  Depressing.  I gotta get a life.