A zen story

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me.”

Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”

The monk replied, “I have.”

“Then,” said Joshu, “Go and wash your bowl."

 At that moment the monk was enlightened.

A meditation regarding the people who believe that Donald Trump really saw muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey City...

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be:
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

Whoever said it, it's good advice

"Let's keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out."

~ attributed to Judge Harry Stone on Night Court
~ also attributed to Carl Sagin

~ originally said by Walter Kotschnig

Dooby dooby doo!

"Ubi dubium, ibi libertas"

with doubt, there is freedom

How's the view from down there?

Sometimes, you just have to lay in the gutter and watch the cars go by...

~ Steve, on periodic melancholia

The virtue of a man ought to be measured, not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.

~ Blaise Pascal

Leonard Nimoy's last tweet...

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. 

LLAP

~ Leonard Nimoy 

Now if I could just find that person...

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The World only spins forward.

~ Tony Kushner

Isaac had some good ones...

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "

~ Isaac Asimov

You  can't reason a person out of a conclusion they arrived at unreasonably.

The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones...

There are four kinds of persons:  zeal without knowledge; knowledge without zeal; neither knowledge nor zeal; both zeal and knowledge.

~ Pascal, Pensees

Open your eyes, man!

It's just a matter of time before a man opens his eyes and gives up his one dream, his one dream of happiness.

~ Ronny (played by Nicholas Cage) in Moonstruck

Hut, two, three, four...

Time marches,
choices narrow.

~ Nancy on Weeds

Original Haiku...composed on a gym treadmill

A leaf-covered path.
A moon-lit night, just us two;
walking hand in hand.

I'm packed and ready to go...

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

~ Rumi

Sometimes easier said than done...

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

~ Oprah Winfrey

At least now you know...

I've been honest with you.
I simply cannot love you the way you want me to.

~ Dr. Miranda Jones, on the Star Trek episode Is There in Truth No Beauty?

Both in music and in life...

You get zero points for playing hard things badly.

~Tommy Igoe

Pertaining to the Super Bowl...or any event in your life, really.

Act like you've been here before.

~ Vince Lombardi

Guess some of us are missing out...

Love is life.

And if you miss love, you miss life.

~ Leo Buscaglia

Zen Stories

A monk said to Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. Please teach me.” 

"Have you eaten your breakfast?" asked Joshu

"Yes, I have," replied the monk.

"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Joshu.

With this the monk gained insight.

Steve Jobs' last words...

Oh, wow.  Oh, wow.  Oh, wow.

Don't acquire what you can't afford...

90 square foot apartment in downtown Manhattan

Do you smell something?

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere. 
~ Henry David Thoreau

Being with someone you love is high on the list of life's great pleasures. But so is vanishing for days into a cherished pursuit with no one to answer to. So is not having to deal with another person's schedule, stomach or tiresome shtick. And in case you haven't heard, marriage, for all its hype, can be a real bummer sometimes. I've been lonely married and I've been lonely single, and compared to the torture of sleeping beside someone you no longer love, or know has left the building, or maybe are hoping will choke in his sleep, lonely single is a walk in the park.

~ Wendy Dennis, 'Are You Dating Yet?'

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

~ Emerson

The soul is dyed the color of it’s thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice, Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is WHO you become. Your integrity is your destiny, it is the light that guides your way.

~ Author unknown

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

~ Stephen King

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
~ Christopher Hitchens

“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” 

– Hubert H. Humphrey

Songs, or elections, whatever

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”

~ singer-songwriter Woodie Guthrie

WYSIWYG: Enjoying life is the direct result of a favorable attitude

~ read on a Bahama vacation chat list...

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. 

~ Lenny Bruce

Artists understand that new isn't for everyone.  It's not even for most people.  Pass them by. They can catch up later.

~ Seth Godin

I gotta admit, I see his point...

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

  ~ Paul Krugman in The Angry Rich Op Ed in the NYT, Sept 19, 2010

I
didn't
shoplift
the pootie!

~ Jerry in Jerry MaGuire

Anyone who would use religion as their reason to cause unhappiness to another is guilty of a great sin. 


These sins are committed first against their children. They have learned nothing from their faiths. The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions.


~ Robert Ebert, while commenting on Christopher Hitchens' book on Religion.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

~ Lao Tzu

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt.

~ Mark Twain

Wisdom read on Twitter

If your mother drives you to school -- you ain't no gangsta. Pull your damn pants up!

Two moves? He's a player!

He's got two moves:

Squeeze the Charmin, and poke around down there like he's trying to pop a balloon.

~ Earl's mom, talking about Earl's dad's canoodling skills, on My Name is Earl.

I can't think of a reason, either!

All right, I'm out...

Why should I stick around here if there is no chance of us making out?

~ Puck on Glee

Eternal truth...

Every time a couple gets married, two single people die...

~ Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation

Just kidding...

Hitting is not always wrong... I mean, if it hadn't been for the hard smacks to the face, how else would I have learned not to talk when my parents were drinking?

~ Comedian Jim Norton, responding on Red Eye to criticism that England still allows spanking.

Say what you want, I think he gets it...

Borrowing may make the lives of Albany politicians easier. It may delay our inevitable day of fiscal reckoning past one more November election. But borrowing to help close our budget deficit, by itself, does not do a single thing to help improve our long-term fiscal condition. In fact, it makes an already bad situation worse. And it violates virtually every principle of responsible budgeting.

~ David Paterson, Governor of New York

 David Paterson, Governor of New York

Eternal truth...

It's not the lying that screws people up, 

It's the finding out.

~ Joy on My Name is Earl

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was saying...

If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?

~  Buddha

As a person who typed in many a program...

I'm glad the Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards. I'm glad it encouraged a generation of kids to tinker and explore. I'm also glad that I don't live in the effing '70s and have to type in programs from a magazine anymore.


Joel Johnson's response to Cory Doctorow's bashing of the new iPad.


In the late 70's and early 80', I used to regularly visit the Periodical Room at the Iowa State University library, and peruse the computer magazines.  If a program struck my fancy (backgammon! or a printer utility...add lower case!), I'd copy the programs (at 10 cents a page), run home, and type the program into my Apple ][+ (48k memory and two floppy disks, with an amber screen monitor).

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

~ Thomas Jefferson, 1802

Now where are my running shoes?

You’re gonna die. You’re gonna die. And nobody’s gonna care which version of the iPhone you used to make something on Twitter, or to go and post about your latest date on Facebook.

And I’m not even talking about legacy; I’m talking about the fact that I personally feel most alive when I’m making something, and I feel least alive when I’m being led around by some obnoxious use of my attention that I wasn’t aware of.

To me, that’s the thing. You can buy the jogging shoes and you can buy the Runner’s World, but until you put them on and walk out the door every day, you’re just a fat man.

There’s a famous Zen story that goes:

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?
The monk replied, “I have eaten.”
Joshu said, “Then you had better wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.

...and democrats

"Bullies crumble when you hit them back..."

~ Andrew Brietbart

farsighted...

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect;

it means that you decide to see beyond the imperfections.

~ Read on a plaque in a family restaurant, Sullivan, Missouri.

I miss Alan...

We are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.

~ former Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, lamenting Washington’s lack of political will to confront the soaring national debt

Eternal truth...

The good thing about darkness and rain is that they hide tears.

~ Wendy Button

So what's the point of wishing for something that will never come true?


~ 'becca (the daughter) on Californication

We both agree on this...

Although I often grow weary of her incessant Bush-bashing, I do agree with this:

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

~ Maureen Dowd, Dec 29, 2009 op-ed