Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Karl Henning]

Foo-eeey!

[Wakefield]

Roberto Bolaño's business card:



POET AND IDLER

 

[Karl Henning]

. . . but that is redundant!

(Oh, I kid, I kid . . . .)

[Wakefield]

. . . but that is redundant!

(Oh, I kid, I kid . . . .)

When I found this card on line, it was translated as "POET AND LAZY". But I think I did a good job replacing "lazy" for "idler" (thanks Dr. Johnson!). 

[EigenUser]

"Why is it that when it's a human it's an abortion, but when it's a chicken it's an omelet?!"
-George Carlin

[Karl Henning]

Well, when it's a human, you don't want it to be an omelette.

(Oh, thank goodness snypsss doesn't read this thread . . . .)

[Florestan]

Well, when it's a human, you don't want it to be an omelette.

And abortion is a strange way of describing a chicken laying eggs.

[Karl Henning]

Even for a humorist, the false equivalence of human and poultry is . . . a stretch

[Florestan]

Even for a humorist, the false equivalence of human and poultry is . . . a stretch

Carlin is very good most of the times, but he can be really bad sometimes. 

[mn dave]

"And the first commandment reads
That human flesh and blood
Is sacred
Until there is no more food" -- The Stranglers

[mn dave]

"Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh." -- Marcus Aurelius

[Wakefield]

"Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh." -- Marcus Aurelius

Unfortunately, those miseries are all what we own... at least, all that which we are sure of having.

I recalled this quote from Unforgiven:

Will Munny: It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.

[jochanaan]

Even for a humorist, the false equivalence of human and poultry is . . . a stretch

Hmmm...Would a spirit chicken be a poulter-geist?

[kishnevi]

Even for a humorist, the false equivalence of human and poultry is . . . a stretch

Tell that the Ultraorthodox Jews this Friday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapparot

what the Wikipedia article does not mention is that the slaughtered chickens are given directly to a poor person or poor family to provide a meal for them.  In pre 1900 society, that was practical and easily doable in most communities.  Nowadays, the Jewish communities that engage in this version of the ritual make arrangements so that the chickens do in fact end up as meals for people who need financial help.

But even the relatively traditional Israeli rabbinate has now come out discouraging the use of chickens because too much can go wrong with the chickens in the mass factory approach that is now used.

My family always observed the money instead of chicken version--in my case, a check made out to this organization.
http://mazon.org/

ETA: I've gone in and edited the Wikipedia article to make the charitable element clear.

[Karl Henning]

Most interesting, thank you.

[North Star]

Here's a similar thread on another forum, full of great material:
www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?31481-What-is-your-favorite-quote-And-why/

[North Star]

"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
George W Bush

[jochanaan]

"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
George W Bush

Ouch!   I had forgotten the "misunderestimated" predecessor to the current President, about whom one can say many things but not that he is guilty of any sort of malapropism.

[Florestan]

Dostoyevski - The Possessed

I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular rôle among us, that of the progressive patriot, so to say, and he was passionately fond of playing the part—so much so that I really believe he could not have existed without it. Not that I would put him on a level with an actor at a theatre, God forbid, for I really have a respect for him. This may all have been the effect of habit, or rather, more exactly of a generous propensity he had from his earliest years for indulging in an agreeable day-dream in which he figured as a picturesque public character. He fondly loved, for instance, his position as a "persecuted" man and, so to speak, an "exile." There is a sort of traditional glamour about those two little words that fascinated him once for all and, exalting him gradually in his own opinion, raised him in the course of years to a lofty pedestal very gratifying to vanity. In an English satire of the last century, Gulliver, returning from the land of the Lilliputians where the people were only three or four inches high, had grown so accustomed to consider himself a giant among them, that as he walked along the streets of London he could not help crying out to carriages and passers-by to be careful and get out of his way for fear he should crush them, imagining that they were little and he was still a giant. He was laughed at and abused for it, and rough coachmen even lashed at the giant with their whips. But was that just? What may not be done by habit? Habit had brought Stepan Trofimovitch almost to the same position, but in a more innocent and inoffensive form, if one may use such expressions, for he was a most excellent man.

I am even inclined to suppose that towards the end he had been entirely forgotten everywhere; but still it cannot be said that his name had never been known. It is beyond question that he had at one time belonged to a certain distinguished constellation of celebrated leaders of the last generation, and at one time—though only for the briefest moment—his name was pronounced by many hasty persons of that day almost as though it were on a level with the names of Tchaadaev, of Byelinsky, of Granovsky, and of Herzen, who had only just begun to write abroad. But Stepan Trofimovitch's activity ceased almost at the moment it began, owing, so to say, to a "vortex of combined circumstances." And would you believe it? It turned out afterwards that there had been no "vortex" and even no "circumstances," at least in that connection. I only learned the other day to my intense amazement, though on the most unimpeachable authority, that Stepan Trofimovitch had lived among us in our province not as an "exile" as we were accustomed to believe, and had never even been under police supervision at all. Such is the force of imagination! All his life he sincerely believed that in certain spheres he was a constant cause of apprehension, that every step he took was watched and noted, and that each one of the three governors who succeeded one another during twenty years in our province came with special and uneasy ideas concerning him, which had, by higher powers, been impressed upon each before everything else, on receiving the appointment. Had anyone assured the honest man on the most irrefutable grounds that he had nothing to be afraid of, he would certainly have been offended. Yet Stepan Trofimovitch was a most intelligent and gifted man, even, so to say, a man of science, though indeed, in science... well, in fact he had not done such great things in science. I believe indeed he had done nothing at all. But that's very often the case, of course, with men of science among us in Russia.

(I really don´t know why I posted that. It´s just that after the exchange in another thread I felt the urge to re-read those two paragraphs.)

[Ken B]

Ouch!   I had forgotten the "misunderestimated" predecessor to the current President, about whom one can say many things but not that he is guilty of any sort of malapropism.

Not in the Austrian language. Not in any of these 57 states at least.