When I was ordained, it was for a special ministry, that of serving children and families through television. I consider that what I do through "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is my ministry. A ministry doesn't have to be only through a church, or even through an ordination. And I think we all can minister to others in this world by being compassionate and caring. I hope you will feel good enough about yourselves that you will want to minister to others, and that you will find your own unique ways to do that. -- Fred Rogers

Unarian An avout sworn not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside world until the next Annual Apert. Informally, “One-off.” ~ From the glossary of 'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson

Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!

There IS no God — but if you're any kind of real American, you'll demand that He treat you as an EQUAL.

Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Do as I say, not as I do. Do me a favour and don't tell me about it. I don't want to know. What did you do *this* time? If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you. When I was your age... I won't love you if you keep doing that. Think of all the starving children in India. If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar. I'm going to kill you. Way to go, clumsy. If you don't like it, you can lump it.

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal. -- Dr. Karl Menninger, "The Human Mind", 1930

I know you teenagers watch a whole lot of television and you get kind of a mixed-up view of what the world is really like. The worst thing is that TV makes crime look good, where actually crime is bad. First of all, there's no such thing as a criminal mastermind, okay? The prison population is not a brain trust. If you ever skimmed through the mugshots down at the police station, you know you're not looking at the MIT graduating class. And if you're a criminal, one of these guys is going to be your roommates for the next 20 years. Also, if you get into the criminal line of work, you got to work a lot of nights, there are zero benefits and no one will come to your patio dinner party because they're afraid there's going to be a drive-by shooting. Despite what you see on television, most criminals either get caught or killed or they have to change their identity and move to a country where there's nothing worth stealing. So I'm asking you to just say no to assault, break-and-enter, arson, murder, theft, drug trafficking, and, oh yeah, real estate sales.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Pretty soon, you're going to find yourself going on and on about every topic under the sun, and you're going to wonder, "Why am I suddenly the Encyclopedia Britannica in shorts and a T-shirt? And why this urge to tell anyone with ears?" Well, you're a middle-aged man now. And middle-aged men know everything. Oh, yeah. Middle-aged men know the best route on any highway from one place to another place. We know how to fix stuff. We know how to cut the lawn properly. We know everything. But you got to keep this knowledge to yourself, all right? I know that you know that your neighbor is planting that shrub the wrong way, but don't say anything. I too have seen my wife wallpaper the bedroom the hard way. Just keep your mouth shut, all right? Because when they found out how smart we are, they get jealous, all right? I don't know who said, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," but I'm guessing it was a middle-aged man. So whatever it is you know - and I know it's a lot - keep it under your hat and you'll be able to keep your friends. Believe me, I know.

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went. -- Terry Gilliam

I'm in LOVE with DON KNOTTS!!

In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell. Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

Red Green: We learned that everything has its place. Mine is here, Harold's is over there, and Moose's barber kit's is at the bottom of the lake.

Going with the flow is soothing but risky. -- Jenny Holzer

The eyes have been used to signify a perverse capacity - honed to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and male supremacy - to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power. The instruments of visualization in multinationalist, postmodernist culture have compounded these meanings of dis-embodiment. The visualizing technologies are without apparent limit; the eye of any ordinary primate like us can be endlessly enhanced by sonography systems, magnetic resonance imaging, artificial intelligence-linked graphic manipulation systems, scanning electron microscopes, computer-aided tomography scanners, colour enhancement techniques, satellite surveillance systems, home and office VDTs, cameras for every purpose from filming the mucous membrane lining the gut cavity of a marine worm living in the vent gases on a fault between continental plates to mapping a planetary hemisphere elsewhere in the solar system. Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice. And like the god-trick, this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters. Zoe Sofoulis (1988) calls this the cannibal-eye of masculinist extra-terrestrial projects for excremental second birthing. ~ Donna J. Haraway

Theres a part of all of us that longs to know that even whats weakest about us is still redeemable and can ultimately count for something good. -- Fred Rogers

And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. "This," cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red to come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!" Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, "YOPP!" And that Yopp... That one last small, extra Yopp put it over! Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover their voices were heard! They rang out clear and clean. And they elephant smiled. "Do you see what I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their whole world was saved by the smallest of All!" "How true! Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo. "And, from now on, you know what I'm planning to do? From now on, I'm going to protect them with you!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO! From the sun in the summer. From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect them. No matter how small-ish!" -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"

You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.

"World conquerors sometimes become fools, but fools never become world conquerors." -- "The Outer Limits: The Invisibles"

Freud described three great historical wounds to the primary narcissism of the self-centered human subject, who tries to hold panic at bay by the fantasy of human exceptionalism. First is the Copernican wound that removed Earth itself, mans home world, from the center of the cosmos and indeed paved the way for that cosmos to burst open into a universe of inhumane, nonteleological times and spaces. Science made that decentering cut. The second wound is the Darwinian, which put Homo sapiens rmly in the world of other critters, all trying to make an earthly living and so evolving in relation to one another without the sureties of directional signposts that culminate in Man. Science inicted that cruel cut too. The third wound is the Freudian, which posited an unconscious that undid the primacy of conscious processes, including the reason that comforted Man with his unique excellence, with dire consequences for teleology once again. Science seems to hold that blade too. I want to add a fourth wound, the informatic or cyborgian, which infolds organic and technological esh and so melds that Great Divide as well. ~ Donna J. Haraway