From xkcd: Read more →
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It’s called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn’t blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator. — Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Read more →
You didn’t come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can. — Morris Buttermaker Read more →
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana “Is that a fact?” she said. “Well–I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re ten.” “Santayana was a famous philosopher at Harvard,” said Slazinger, a Harvard man. And Mrs. Berman said, “Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard Read more →
What is the point of this story? What information pertains? The thought that life could be better Is woven indelibly Into our hearts And our brains. — Paul Simon, “Train in the Distance” Read more →
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily . . . and threw them out the window in disgust. Read more →
How I thought it worked was, if you were great, like Martin Luther King Jr., you had a dream. Since I wasn’t great, I figured I had no dream and the best I could do was follow someone else’s. Now I believe it works like this: It’s having the dream that makes you great. It’s the dream that produces the greatness. — Barbara Waugh Read more →
Things I’m thankful for this year: Nothing lasts forever. Read more →
But in Old Rimrock, New Jersey, in 1995, when the Ivan Ilyches come trooping back to lunch at the clubhouse after their morning round of golf and start to crow, “It doesn’t get any better than this,” they may be a lot closer to the truth than Leo Tolstoy ever was. The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that — well, lucky you. He had learned the worst lesson life can teach — that it makes no sense. And when that happens the… Read more →
[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending. — John Hodgman Read more →
Let’s begin this typical courtship process, shall we? Read more →
Via Kathy Sierra, an illustration of Seth Godin‘s “safe is risky, risky is safe” maxim. A guy in Colorado goes rock climbing. Meanwhile, his parked car gets crushed by a gigantic — and I mean gigantic (you’ve got to see the picture) — boulder. Read more →
In the old days, greed and covetousness were seen as sinful; now they are encouraged. Jack Welch’s Winning sets the tone. The author grins manically from the cover – despite the silver hair, manicured nails and perfect teeth, he looks like Beelzebub incarnate. But why is “winning” so great? Because, says Welch, it enables people to make lots of money which . . . erm . . . enables them to “get better healthcare, buy vacation homes, and secure a comfortable retirement”. That’s it. Those are the three goals of our mortal existence, otherwise known as more pills, more mortgages and more burglar alarms. Whatever happened to joy, pleasure, brotherhood? Whatever happened to enjoying life? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to love? — Tom Hodgkinson Read more →
Ruby Jones, 67, worked in the hospice unit at Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans. Last August, as Hurricane Katrina was zeroing in on the city, she elected not to evacuate, but to stay with the eight dying patients under her care. She has been recognized by Newsweek as one of “15 People Who Make America Great”: Read more →
Via PostSecret. Read more →
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Save the Children has published its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report on newborn mortality. As usual, the U.S. takes a beating: Read more →
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once brave and beautiful. — Rainer Maria Rilke Read more →
I take my cell phone out of my pocket and notice that the battery’s gone dead. “Way to plan ahead,” my son says, without looking up from his GameBoy. Read more →
There is one bright spot at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more rapidly—in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from death. — Leo Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Illych” Read more →
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children” Our son turned 12 in July . . . “I almost cried today,” my wife says. “Every year, I take Casey to the pumpkin patch and I take the best photo, but when we drove by today, he didn’t want to go . . .” Read more →
