It has been said that Public Relations is the art of winning friends and getting people under the influence. -- Jeremy Tunstall

When Chuck Norris has sex with a man, it won't be because he is gay. It will be because he has run out of women.

MAGRASSEE: Raw freshwater jellyfish are served as a restaurant staple. Some see the faces of lost loved ones in the lysergic cranberry bogs. - THE INVISIBLE STATES OF AMERICA A TOURISM GUIDE BY UEL ARAMCHEK

A high school student wrote to ask, "What was the greatest event in American history?" I can't say. However, I suspect that like so many "great" events, it was something very simple and very quiet with little or no fanfare (such as someone forgiving someone else for a deep hurt that eventually changed the course of history). The really important "great" things are never center stage of life's dramas; they're always "in the wings". That's why it's so essential for us to be mindful of the humble and the deep rather than the flashy and the superficial. -- Fred Rogers

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. -- Carl Jung

Kirk: I hope I'm not crowding you. Cogley: What's the matter? Don't you like books? Kirk: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space. Cogley: A computer, huh? I got one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents, a synthesis of all the great legal decisions written throughout time. I never use it. Kirk: Why not? Cogley: I've got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something--my library. Thousands of books. Kirk: What would be the point? Cogley: This is where the law is, not in that homogenized, pasteurized, synthesized... do you want to know the law, the ancient concepts in their own language, learn the intent of the men who wrote them, from Moses to the tribunal of Alpha 3? Books. Kirk: You have to be either an obsessive crackpot who's escaped from his keeper or Samuel T. Cogley, attorney-at-law. Cogley: Right on both counts. "Star Trek: The Original Series: Court Martial, Season 1"

I should find the one joke that makes an Alzheimer's patient laugh the hardest and then repeat it to him every single day. ―duneboggler, Feb 2015

Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed, and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under. Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that. No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail"

Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our needs, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is. In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it. But usually when you see a wizard name or call upon some thing, some object to appear, that is not the same, he calls upon no power greater than himself, and what appears is an illusion only. To summon a thing that is not there at all, to call it by speaking its true name, that is a great mastery, not lightly used. Not for mere hungers sake. Yarrow, your little dragon has stolen a cake. Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Light Table Set a wooden table with many candles of different kinds, large and small, colored and plain, ordinary and shaped, normal and scented. Place the candles on the table. Stand thin candles in candlesticks and candleholders. Stand thick candles and square candles directly on the table. Anyone who wishes to bring new candles may place them on the table. Light the candles. 1966 Mt. Carroll, Illinois ~ Ken Friedman

Fortune's diet truths: 1: Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream. 2: Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud. 3: Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. In fact, carob is not an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish. 4: There is no such thing as a "fun salad." So let's stop pretending and see salads for what they are: God's punishment for being fat. 5: Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as appealing as tepid beer. 6: A world lacking gravy is a tragic place! 7: You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and low-cal." Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver." They aren't and it isn't. 8: Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable. 9: Fresh fruit is not dessert. CAKE is dessert! 10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies. 11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and swallowing.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

The Fundamental Truths (4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.

The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way. -- Larry Wall in <199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org>

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it. -- Margaret Fuller

A major part of love is commitment. If we are committed to someone, if I'm committed to loving you, then it's not possible for me to 'fall out of love.' ~ bell hooks

Reyna d’Assia: The Key to Immortal Consciousness 15. Make no useless movements or sounds.

The Fundamental Truths (9) For all resources, whatever it is, you need more.

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Christ's crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals. ~ William Blake