Drinking whiskey clear!
My favorite quotes!
“There is a master key and a spare key for the office. Dwight has them both. When I asked, ‘What if you die, Dwight? How will we get into the office?’ He said, ‘If I’m dead, you guys have been dead for weeks.'”
– Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly
The Office
“It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me has become predominant, when half an hour elapsed and I was still alone.”
– Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre
It seems appropriate today.
Standing firm on this stony ground,
The wind blows hard,
Pulls these clothes around;
I harbour all the same worries as most,
The temptations to leave or to give up the ghost.
I wrestle with an outlook on life,
That shifts between darkness and shadowy light;
I struggle with words for fear that they’ll hear,
But Orpheus sleeps on his back still dead to the world.
Sunlight falls, my wings open wide,
There’s a beauty here I cannot deny;
And the bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs,
Are just so many people I knew never cared.
Down below on the wreck of the ship,
Are a stronghold of pleasures I couldn’t regret;
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide,
As Orpheus keeps to his promise and stays by my side.
Tell me, I’ve still a lot to learn.
Understand, these fires never stop,
Believe me, when this joke is tired of laughing,
I will hear the promise of my Orpheus sing.
Sleepers sleep as we row the boat,
Just you, the weather, and I gave up hope;
But all of the hurdles that fell in our laps,
Were fuel for the fire and straw for our backs.
Still the voices have stories to tell,
Of the power struggles in heaven and hell;
But we feel secure against such mighty dreams,
As Orpheus sings of the promise tomorrow may bring.
– David Sylvian
“Orpheus”
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
– James Joyce
“The Dead”
I watched NBC’s Parks and Recreation when it first came on the air, but didn’t keep up with it, as it seemed too much like a clone of The Office. But the dudes over at A Hamburger Today tipped me off to the most recent episode, in which burgers played a central role. And man… that episode was funny!
April hands Ron Swanson a phone message.
Ron: “Did you get his number?”
April: “No.”
Ron crumples the message up and tosses it in the trash can.
Ron: “That’s my girl…”
Ron goes to the health food store with co-worker Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe):
Ron: “I came here for the same reason people go to the zoo… [looks at white man in dreadlocks scooping some type of grain from a barrel] Shhhh! Look at that thing! Nature is amazing!”
“Zerts are what I call desserts. Tray-trays are entrees. I call sandwiches sammies, sandoozles, or Adam Sandlers. Air conditioners are cool blasterz with a ‘z.’ I don’t know where that came from. I call cakes big ol’ cookies. I call noodles long-ass rice. Fried chicken is fry-fry chicky-chick. Chicken parm is chicky-chicky parm parm. Chicken cacciatore: chicky catch. I call eggs pre-birds or future birds. Root beer is super water. Tortillas are bean blankies. And I call forks…food rakes!”
– Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford
Asked why he was getting samples of vegetarian bacon and immediately throwing them into the trash can:
Ron: “I’m saving anyone from eating this!”
And the highlight of the episode… the burger cook-off:
Chris: “I humbly place before you my ‘East meets West’ patented Traeger turkey burger, an Asian fusion burger made with Willow Farms organic turkey, a toasted Taleggio cheese crisp, papaya chutney, black truffle aioli and microgreens on a gluten-free brioche bun. Enjoy!”
Ron: “Here’s mine. It’s a hamburger… made out of meat… on a bun… with nothing. Add ketchup if you want. I couldn’t care less.”
After Ron wins the cook-off:
“Turkey can never beat cow, Chris. Sorry.”
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I can find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”
– C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
“The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.” He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: “How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”
Winston thought. “By making him suffer,” he said.
“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always-do not forget this, Winston-always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever.”
– George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty–Four
“I know what it’s like to feel like you’re under the hammer and feel like you have nowhere to go, feel like you have no escape. You know what’s going to come now, what’s going to happen. You just feel like there is nothing you can do about it. You feel like you’re trapped under a mountain ‘cos it’s slowly squashing you and you find it hard to breathe some days. But you know what I used to say to myself all those days when I was trapped in that little concrete cell with just one blanket? Every day I used to say to myself this is how diamonds are made. Millions of years of pressure. But if you refuse to break, find a way to hang on somehow, eventually someone digs you up. Sets you free. You will be a gem. Tough, Sparkling and Beautiful.”
– Peter O’Brien as George Freeman
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities
I bought you mail order
My plain wrapper baby
Your skin is like vinyl
The perfect companion
You float in my new pool
Deluxe and delightful
Inflatable doll
My role is to serve you
Disposable darling
Can’t throw you away now
Immortal and life size
My breath is inside you
I’ll dress you up daily
And keep you till death sighs
– Roxy Music
“In Every Dream Home A Heartache”
When the Vatican made Mary’s Assumption dogma,
the crowds at San Pietro screamed Papá.
The Holy Father dropped his shaving glass,
and listened. His electric razor purred,
his pet canary chirped on his left hand.
The lights of science couldn’t hold a candle
to Mary risen – at one miraculous stroke,
angel-wing’d, gorgeous as a jungle bird!
But who believed this? Who could understand?
Pilgrims still kissed Saint Peter’s brazen sandal.
The Duce’s lynched, bare, booted skull still spoke.
God herded his people to the coup de grâce –
the costumed Switzers sloped their pikes to push,
O Pius, through the monstrous human crush…
– Robert Lowell
“Beyond the Alps”