hopelessly hopeful

"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:40:00 -0800

“Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.”

- from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

"Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan. (One who does..."

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:41:39 -0800

“

Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.

(One who does not know how to look back to where they came from will never arrive where they are going.)

”

"Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:15:11 -0800

“Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster
when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to
reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone
believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for
a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.”

- Mohandas K Gandhi

So Michael Moore, director of the anti-gun "Bowling For Columbine", curiously uses MIA's "Paper Planes", known for its gunshot-laden refrain, in the promo for his newest movie.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:23:45 -0700

via inothernews

Am I the only one who finds the more compelling metaphor with regards to Wall Street and capitalism is “paper”, as in “making paper”? (Which, more than shooting shit up, is really what “Paper Planes” is all about: making paper by making paper—making money by fabricating documents.) And that sample that MIA uses is from the Clash’s “Straight to Hell”, which is even more fitting.

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone..."

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:02:06 -0700

“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.”

- Tyler Durden from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

"It tastes like… burning."

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:35:55 -0700

“It tastes like… burning.”

- Ralph Wiggum, from “The Simpsons”

"Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:16:40 -0700

“Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.”

- Philip K Dick

"I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!"

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:22:20 -0700

“I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!”

- Homer J Simpson

"Oh, heavens no! It had to be terror sweat!"

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:19:25 -0700

“Oh, heavens no! It had to be terror sweat!”

- Julius M. Hibbert, M.D., from The Simpsons

"He experienced one of those “self” moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn..."

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:15:55 -0700

“He experienced one of those “self” moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn around and look at yourself and think “Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?” He whimpered very slightly.”

- from Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams

"…unmetered communications are the secret engine of the economy, of liberty. The highest-quality..."

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:33:33 -0700

“…unmetered communications are the secret engine of the economy, of liberty. The highest-quality ‘content’ isn’t hundred-million-dollar movies; it’s conversations with other people.”

- from “Unwirer” by Charles Stross

"[T]he whole idea that America was post-racial and post-black was laughable from the beginning."

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:22:41 -0700

“[T]he whole idea that America was post-racial and post-black was laughable from the beginning.”

- Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in an interview after his arrest

"On the train to SD, I saw a gentleman reading a novel with a dragon on the front and immediately..."

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:45:34 -0700

“On the train to SD, I saw a gentleman reading a novel with a dragon on the front and immediately understood that he was probably never going to feel the inside of a woman.”

- Some Suicide Girl at Comic Con ‘08 (via eyemused)

I can tell you that this is definitely not always true. ;)

"…being a white man, that’s normal. Everybody else has biases and prejudices…[,] but the white man,..."

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:59:46 -0700

“…being a white man, that’s normal. Everybody else has biases and prejudices…[,] but the white man, they don’t have any ethnicity, they don’t have any gender, they’re just like the normal folks.”

- Jeff Toobin paraphrasing Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

"but no, by my own definition of racism, i am absolutely not a racist."

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:50:11 -0700

“but no, by my own definition of racism, i am absolutely not a racist.”

- from rootless-e, appikouros

"Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time, on another..."

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:02:00 -0700

“Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time, on another scale, and actually make a difference for our priorities.”

- Sarah Palin

This line totally makes me paranoid. I hope it’s not code for “overthrow of the duly elected government of the U.S. by any means necessary”

"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and..."

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:54:06 -0700

“Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous “trickle-down” theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow “trickle down” to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.”

- Hunter S Thompson (via gwfrink3)

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been..."

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:52:06 -0700

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

- Douglas Adams (via bjornstar)

"I have yet to hear what possible good it would do for the President of the United States to..."

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:19:15 -0700

“

I have yet to hear what possible good it would do for the President of the United States to encourage the protesters, except to give the Iranian regime a better excuse for killing more of them. McCain’s bleatings are either for domestic political consumption or self-satisfaction, a form of hip-shooting onanism that demonstrates why he would have been a foreign policy disaster had he been elected.

To put it as simply as possible, McCain—and his cohorts—are trying to score political points against the President in the midst of an international crisis. It is the sort of behavior that Republicans routinely call “unpatriotic” when Democrats are doing it. I would never question John McCain’s patriotism, no matter how misguided his sense of the country’s best interests sometimes seems. His behavior has nothing to do with love of country; it has everything to do with love of self.

”

- Joe Klein, “About Last Night”, Swampland. 2009 Jun 23, via Steve Benen, “Klein 1, McCain 0”, Political Animal.

"This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things—broad incongruities,..."

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:00:00 -0700

“This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things—broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.”

- Satan, from “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain, via Andrew Sullivan