Quips and Quotations

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

--Citizen Kane, Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles

Sizing It Up...or Down

The financial industry?

Too big to fail.

The middle-class?

The jury's still out on that one.

Connect the Thoughts

I going to conduct a little experiment today. Not the kind of experiment you do in a laboratory. A laboratory where you might expect to see scientists pouring things in and out of test tubes. I wonder if that's where the expression "down the tubes" originated. Expressions can originate in all kinds of different places. As many places as there are on a map. Do they even still print maps now that there's all these Global Positioning Devices? God knows, they're coming out with all kind of new devices these days. And the days will start getting longer once Daylight Savings Time ends. Time is relative, as Einstein said. Einstein changed our conception of reality. Reality as opposed to make-believe. Make-believe is for kids. But kids have short attention spans. In fact, to get them to pay attention, the teacher has to sometimes hit her desk with her ruler. And she's going to need that ruler if she wants to teach geometry. Geometry being a math skill. And you're going to need all kinds of skills if you want to survive in today's economy. As the economy is in a recession, maybe depression. Though not the Great Depression, which they had in the 1930s. I don't know that I'd want to live in the 1930s, though I do like lot of the movies they made then. My favorite kinds of movies are comedies. I think some of the funniest comedies starred Laurel and Hardy. I wonder if Oliver Hardy was related to Thomas Hardy, a writer who lived in the 19th Century. I don't know that I'd want to live in the 19th Century when they were still riding around on horses. I can't believe horses like people sitting on their backs. Maybe their backs are just super strong. I believe the strongest animal is the elephant. And it's a myth that elephants are afraid of mice. Mice do scare a lot of humans. But many more humans simply regard them as pests to be got rid of, usually with traps. When setting a trap you need the right kind of bait. For instance, if it's a mousetrap, the bait is cheese. You can use any kind of cheese: American, provolone, Swiss, etc. The Swiss are known not only for there cheese but also their chocolate. However, chocolate originally comes from South America. South America is also where tobacco originated. Tobacco has caused all kinds of health problems. If you want good health, avoid tobacco, along with foods with too much cholesterol. One source of cholesterol is beef. However, the late Robert Atkins thought beef was better for you than food with a lot of carbohydrates.

As I said, I'm conducting a little experiment. The Philadelphia Experiment. Philadelphia Cream Cheese. The moon is made out of green cheese. Green Eggs and Ham. Ham sandwich. The Earl of Sandwich. Duke of Earl. Hello there, pilgrim, this is the Duke speaking. Plain speaking. Cleveland Plain Dealer. The dealer well sell you some dope. The straight dope. Walk the straight and narrow. I Walk the Line. What's My Line? What's New, Pussycat? Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? Been there, done that. That Girl. The "It" Girl. It Came From Outer Space. Space Ghost. Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Ed Friendly. Mr. Ed. Mr. and Mrs. Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter. May I take your daughter's hand in marriage? Marriage license. License to kill. Time to kill. Time magazine. Magazine subscription. Subscription drugs. Addicted to drugs. You might as well admit it, you're addicted to love. Love means never having to say your sorry. Sorry about that, Chief. Indian chief. Indian summer. What I did on my summer vacation. Plan the perfect vacation. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Good morning. It's morning in America. North America. North by Northwest. Northwest Passage. Passage to India. India ink. Ink stained wretch. That carpet is stained. Magic carpet. Black magic. Jack Black. The House That Jack Built. The House That Ruth Built. Babe Ruth. I've Got You, Babe. I've Got a Secret. Secret agent. Talent agent. Talent show. The show must go on. Go, man, go! Man does not live by bread alone. Wonder bread. Wonder Woman. American woman, stay away from me. Me, myself, and I. I cannot tell a lie. To tell the truth. Truth be told. Twice-Told Tales. Fairy Tales. Clap if you believe in fairies. I don't believe it. Don't go there. There's no there there. The answer is no. The answer to the question. I have just one question. One Live to Live. Live and let live. Let us pray. Pray to God. Oh, God. Uh, oh. That's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it. Any way you like it. Way out. Out and about. About last night. It Happened One Night. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Dick and Jane. Dick Tracy. Hepburn and Tracy. Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Meadows. Jayne Meadows. Jayne Mansfield. Mike Mansfield. Open mike. Open, sesame. Sesame Street. On the edge of Lonesome Street is Heartbreak Hotel. Hilton Hotel. Paris Hilton. I love Paris in the spring time. Spring in your step. Step right up. Right wing. Left wing. Left of center. Center of attention. Pay attention. Buy now, pay later. Sooner or later. Sooner than you think.

In conclusion, stream of consciousness as a literary device is best suited to a medium other than blogging.

Following Update

I'd like to welcome Standing On My Head (I know you take the e e cummings non-capitalization route, but I'm afraid anybody logging onto this blog for the very first time won't know what the heck I'm talking about.) She's left plenty of comments in the past, for which I'm grateful.

I have no plans to stand on my own head. The world seems upside down enough as it is.

Quips and Quotations

All generalizations are false, including this one.

--Mark Twain

Creative Differences.

The politicization of religion continues unabated. Or maybe the religionization of politics. Not just what's going on now, but politics past, i.e., history.

I was reading this one blog about some politician's beef with gay marriage, and it got me thinking. Not so much about the politician or gay marriage, but what was being said in the comment section. As all bloggers know, the comments can sometimes stray off-course. In this particular instance, instead of a debate on the pros and cons of gay marriage, there was an argument raging about the meaning of this particular phrase from one of our nation's founding documents:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

A commentator seemed to imply that since a Creator bestowed this equality, atheists and agnostics are doomed to forever favor fascist dictatorships. Or something like that. But I'm going to leave that question for some other day. I prefer to concentrate on something else.

Is God Almighty really about equality? Let's examine the facts.

Some people are born big, others are born small. Some people are born beautiful, others are born homely. Some people are born healthy, others are born sickly. Some people are born with 20/20 eyesight, others wear glasses. Some people are born with high IQs, others are born developmentally challenged. Some people are born rich, others are born poor. Some people are born in Western countries with all kinds of modern conveniences, others are born in the Third World and can't, or shouldn't, drink the water. Some people were born into centuries with access to such wonders as cell phones and home computers, others were born at a time when the highest technological achievement was the wheel.

Does that sound like an equal opportunity deity to you?

To be fair, some of those imbalances are human constructs. Rich and poor, for example. Still, if you're going to believe in a God that takes an active interest in human affairs, and that's the kind of God most people seem to want to believe in, then that God must know if that if he (or, more likely, it) plunks a baby into a poor family, than that baby probably will have a harder time of it than another that grows up rich.

On the other hand, can any of those imbalances be blamed solely on God? Take big and small. Clearly, that's God's doing. But the fact that we humans tend to look so much more favorably on the big than the small, well, that's our own fault. No one's making us.

In fact, if you subtract human judgement, they're not inequalities so much as mere differences. But we can't seem to just let different be different. We have to quantify that difference. Assign such people a rank. Figure out where such people go on a graph, chart, or scale. And the bigger the difference, the lower such people may go on that graph, chart, or scale. We, of course, get to be on the high end. Feels better that way.

And it's this desire to quantify, and to feel better about such quantifying, that, throughout human history, has produced such interesting institutions as feudalism, royalty, caste systems, nationalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, slavery, and, in the technically advanced century that ended just a decade ago, genocide.

It also makes some of us picky about who should be issued a marriage license.

When it comes to inequality, we outdo God.

Quips and Quotations

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald