Apothegms

educated men

I can stand here and see her coming out of the bathroom drying her hair. Women barefoot on parquet floors make me weak-kneed and crazy. -- Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

The Conquest of Space

At least when monkeys fling their poo they throw it sideways and not up.

the Revolution

Rummaging in the Great Hall of the castle, he found a suit of armor holding a battle-axe. ``I will chop down some trees with this,'' he said, ``and you must go out and gather kindling.''
-- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

Big Tobacco

Let's take the campaign against smoking in the U.S. I think this is a much more suspicious phenomenon than it appears to be. First, deeply inscribed into it is an idea of absolute narcissism, that whenever you are in contact with another person, somehow he or she can infect you. Second, there is an envy of the intense enjoyment of smoking. There is a certain vision of subjectivity, a certain falseness in liberalism, that comes down to ``I want to be left alone by others; I don't want to get too close to the others.'' Also, in this fight against the tobacco companies, you have a certain kind of politically correct yuppie who is doing very well financially, but who wants to retain a certain anti-capitalist aura. What better way to focus on the obvious bad guy, Big Tobacco? It functions as an ersatz enemy. You can still claim your stock market gains, but you can say, ``I'm against tobacco companies.'' Now I should make it clear that I don't smoke. And I don't like tobacco companies. But this obsession with the danger of smoking isn't as simple as it might appear.
-- Slavoj Zizek

Travel and the practice of ``doing'' cities

We spent all that time in that big smelly fish for nothing!
-- Sally Salt

coolness

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: It worked for a while. But soon Sprite's own focus groups revealed that kids were getting wise to this anti-marketing marketing campaign.

PARTICIPANT: They had Grant Hill telling you not to listen to some celebrity telling you to drink a beverage.

FOCUS GROUP LEADER: Right.

PARTICIPANT: Well, that's what you're doing. You're listening to Grant Hill telling you to drink Sprite.

FOCUS GROUP LEADER: Right.

PARTICIPANT: I don't know how much they probably paid all those stars to come on and say, ``Don't listen to what a star says.''

Evil Overlords

``My researches, I might as well tell you now that I have abandoned them, were in the direction of making a fluorescent lamp. I obtained results which brought me each day nearer to the object of my desire. I found a crystal that was fluorescing 12,000 times, and I thought I had my lamp. Then came the question of practical use. I could make the lamp all right, but when I did so I found that it would kill everybody who would use it continuously.

``No, I did not want to know anything more about X-rays. In the hands of experienced operators they are a valuable adjunct to surgery, locating as then do objects concealed from view, and making, for instance, the operation for appendicitis almost sure. But they are dangerous, deadly, in the hands of inexperienced, or even in the hands of a man who is using them continuously for experiment. There are two pretty good object-lessons of this fact to be found in the Oranges.''

-- Thomas Edison

marriage

I am not too proud to drink the rain.
-- Ivy (Sean Stewart, Cloud's End)

addiction

Hypnotism has helped many people quit [smoking], but you risk becoming the hypnotist's slave. It's your choice: quitting smoking or freedom.
-- The Onion