Showing posts with label quotable quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotable quotes. Show all posts

Friday, March 25, 2022

Can I Quote You On That?

Musings of a quote collector {Shouldn't that be may I quote you on that?}


This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids
 — the Stickies
 — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. 
  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  
Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device 

"I write my own quotes. Except this one. I obviously stole this from somebody really clever." -Brian Celio


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

"Hi, my name's Marcus and I'm a quodophile. This is my first QA meeting." 
"Hi, Marcus."  

I've somehow managed to assemble a 33 page "Google Doc" consisting of hundreds of quotes that I add to occasionally but rarely refer to. I also have a tattered notebook full of quotes that I never refer to but can't bring myself to throw away. 

This is unusual behavior for me because I'm a firm believer that you don't own things they own you and I delight in constantly culling my possessions.

{Who first said you don't own things, they own you? That's an interesting quote.} 

As far as I can tell, I can't tell, Dana. When I went a-googlin' and entered that exact question the Goog, without so much as a by-your-leave, changed the query to Who said the things we own end up owning us? It then answered itself: Quote by Chuck Palahniuk: “The things you own end up owning you. 

It left off the quotation marks at the end. Apparently, the Agorithmite that answered my question needs a grammar update and needs to work on its manners. 

{Who's Chuck Palahniuk?} 

He wrote Fight Club, the book that inspired the movie of the same name. Completely coinkydinkally, I recently tried (and failed) to watch the movie which came out in 1999 (I'm running a little behind). I learned some things though. 

The movie is awful (summary: real men are knuckle-dragging nihilists), it appears the book is awful (I'm not going to read it), and the gang at Google must love the movie, given that my query returned a multitude of hits singing the movie's praises, including video clips.  

{Wait-wait-wait. The gang at Google doesn't tweak search results to reflect their own biases, opinions, and ideologies. That would be unethical!}

Not from their perspective it ain't, however, that's a whole other column. But I drift, this column is supposed to be about my quote-saving obsession. 
 

As I mentioned, it's not as if I regularly fix myself a cup of Cafe Bustelo and scroll through my collection. 

Recently, in the midst of heartlessly and unsentimentally deleting and/or rearranging saved bookmarks in my web browser (those are what saved links to websites are called, Ed <GRIN>), I came across a link to the electronic version of my collection.

Aha! I said to myself for the hundredth or so time, I should go through this thing, only keep the really cool quotes, and actually read them from time to time for inspirational/motivational purposes. 

The same thing happened that always happens. I read a bunch of 'em, liked them all, and...

{I suspect that might be the reason you saved them in the first place.}

And then I gave up, closed the file, thought about how I should transpose the quotes from the tattered and ignored notebook to the usually ignored file — someday — and returned to culling bookmarks.   

<Dana executes an exaggerated yawn.>

{Fascinating stuff this week, Sparky. Leaving the Stickies several hundred columns and a quote collection will no doubt take some of the sting out of the lack of financial remuneration they'll not be receiving to assuage their grief after you're deleted. Hows about a quote for those of us who have endured this column?} 

Well... If you insist.


My most recently added quote is, "The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." -Madeleine L’Engle

{And who, pray tell, is...}

I dunno, wait, I'll be right back... Ah! She was a successful and prolific American writer that I confess I've never heard of.

I also confess that although I agree completely with her, I would add: if you're lucky. An awful lot of my fellow geezers and geezerettes seem to have lost or forgotten much of who and what they were on their way to here and now that would be helpful to remember.

Howsabout this? "Many have lost, or abandoned, much of who and what they once were on their way to here and now that would serve them well." -me

{I'd stick with quoting other people if I were you.}

Harumph! How about "When youth departs may wisdom prove enough."

{That's not bad!}

Not bad! It's great... it's also a Winston Churchill quote. You did suggest that I stick with quoting other writers.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


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Saturday, October 10, 2020

A Quotable Quote

                                   Schottenstein portrait of H.L. Mencken  

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

About 


Glossary 


Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine." -H.L. Mencken


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

This week's quote (above) is embedded in the header of my charming web page. 

I wish I had a pithy quote handy that elegantly expressed why a web page on a screen at least the size of a laptops is so much more conducive to mindful reading than the ubiquitous smartphone but...

[You're digressing right out of the gate. I suggest you stay in your lane while there are still a few gentlepersons left in the world who read more than a title or headline, and possibly a paragraph or two, before moving on.]

You're right, Dana. We've probably already lost half of our potential audience.

The reason I like the quote above so much is twofold. 

First, the reminder that one is always here and that it is always now

[Huh?]

While language and logic would seem to indicate that life is a series of discrete nows following one right after the other: now it's now, and now it's now, and now... That's not the nature of reality. There's no way to divvy up now.  

[Wait-wait-wait. You're talking to me, now. If you talk to me tomorrow you'll be talking to me, later. There's now, and there's later.]  

But when I talk to you tomorrow it will be, now. It's always now. 

[Balderdash! Tomorrow is... later!]

We spoke yesterday, right?

[Yeaaahhh, but...]

Well is it later yet or is it now again? Or, is it always, now? Feels like now to me; it always feels like it's now to me, and, I suspect, everyone else. 

[But when I think about the past or plan for the future...] 

It's always now. And when you do something in the future it'll feel as much like now as now now does. 

[Are you having an acid flashback again or...]

Nope. I'm just...

[Wait-wait-wait. I'm standing, here. If I take a step to my left I'll be standing, there, right? You thought I forgot about...]

Go ahead, take a step to your left, good. Now, Dana, where are you?

[HereI'm right... I hate you.]  


I'm sorry, there's a method to my madness beyond just messing with your head, two of 'em actually. I personally love words and working with words, but words are symbols, handy tools that point at reality, but they're not reality. 

Also, most H. sapiens, by nature, spend a great deal of time reliving the past and/or worrying about/planning for the future in the midst of the here and now. While these are both useful functions it's always here and it's always now.  

While a wise man/woman/person must learn from the past and often postpone gratification for the sake of actually having a future that's worth living, if you spend too much time living in the past/future you'll die without ever having actually lived.

An awful lot of H. Sapiens are suddenly (and often brutally) deleted every day while making other plans. Keeping this in mind helps to keep things in perspective. Keeping this in mind takes some of the sting out of the inevitable instances when life bites you on the bum and helps to keep them in perspective.  


No, I didn't forget that I said twofold, the other fold being "Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine." This reminds us that in addition to trying to remember that it's always here/now and acting accordingly we must always keep our B.S. detectors charged. 

[Nuh-Uh! It means that there's no such thing as hard facts, that everything's a matter of interpretation and subject to change.]  

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

[What the hell is that?]

Sorry, I like to keep the alarm on my B.S. detector turned all the way up. It's a geezer/geezerette/geezem thing, the result of the natural hearing loss that occurs with aging exacerbated by too many unnaturally loud rock concerts. 

[What's a geezem?] 

An old person that prefers not to self-identify as a traditional male or female. Anyways, to paraphrase Jordan Peterson from a video I can't find: obviously, any-thing can be interpreted any-way

BIG BUT. So what?

There are only a limited amount of useful interpretations that will prove to be true (or not true) enough based on practical results in the real world. 

Mencken's obvious hyperbole is about keeping an open mind. It's not an endorsement of the currently popular childish nihilism that's used to justify things like mob justice and claiming science is a social construct. 

This would be a great closing sentence if I had thought of one...

Poppa loves you,

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