Message of the Day for Jan 1, 2006

The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
"Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
"Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang;
Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear. Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
"... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
"The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
"And I was ask'd and authorized to go
To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
"So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
"I've measured it from side to side;
Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

Message of the Day for Dec 31, 2005

Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they are out they
are another's.
-- Susanna Martin, executed for witchcraft, 1681

Message of the Day for Dec 30, 2005

Here there be tygers.

Message of the Day for Dec 29, 2005

...the prevailing Catholic odor - incense, wax, centuries of mild bleating
from the lips of the flock.
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

Message of the Day for Dec 28, 2005

Rule of Creative Research:
(1) Never draw what you can copy.
(2) Never copy what you can trace.
(3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.

Message of the Day for Dec 27, 2005

What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.

Message of the Day for Dec 26, 2005

Some men are discovered; others are found out.

Message of the Day for Dec 25, 2005

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable."
-- Fran Lebowitz

Message of the Day for Dec 24, 2005

Government's Law:
There is an exception to all laws.

Message of the Day for Dec 23, 2005

"Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
normal routines, for children and adults alike."
-- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"

Message of the Day for Dec 22, 2005

Did I SELL OUT yet??

Message of the Day for Dec 21, 2005

Genius is ten percent inspiration and fifty percent capital gains.

Message of the Day for Dec 20, 2005

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
-- Hegel

I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view.
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"

Message of the Day for Dec 19, 2005

+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI)
+ /*
+ * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+ * this makes the year come out right.
+ */
+ year -= 42;
+

Message of the Day for Dec 18, 2005

no brainer:
A decision which, viewed through the retrospectoscope,
is "obvious" to those who failed to make it originally.

Message of the Day for Dec 17, 2005

Famous last words:
(1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
(2) "You and what army?"
(3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
a cop."

Message of the Day for Dec 16, 2005

Hello. Jim Rockford's machine, this is Larry Doheny's machine. Will you
please have your master call my master at his convenience? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
-- "The Rockford Files"

Message of the Day for Dec 15, 2005

If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?

Message of the Day for Dec 14, 2005

A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save
a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning
photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?
-- Paul Harvey

Message of the Day for Dec 13, 2005

"Fantasies are free."
"NO!! NO!! It's the thought police!!!!"

Message of the Day for Dec 12, 2005

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
- Robert Bly

Message of the Day for Dec 11, 2005

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Message of the Day for Dec 10, 2005

One dusty July afternoon, somewhere around the turn of the century, Patrick
Malone was in Mulcahey's Bar, bending an elbow with the other street car
conductors from the Brooklyn Traction Company. While they were discussing the
merits of a local ring hero, the bar goes silent. Malone turns around to see
his wife, with a face grim as death, stalking to the bar.
Slapping a four-bit piece down on the bar, she draws herself up to her
full five feet five inches and says to Mulcahey, "Give me what himself has
been havin' all these years."
Mulcahey looks at Malone, who shrugs, and then back at Margaret Mary
Malone. He sets out a glass and pours her a triple shot of Rye. The bar is
totally silent as they watch the woman pick up the glass and knock back the
drink. She slams the glass down on the bar, gasps, shudders slightly, and
passes out; falling straight back, stiff as a board, saved from sudden contact
with the barroom floor by the ample belly of Seamus Fogerty.
Sometime later, she comes to on the pool table, a jacket under her
head. Her bloodshot eyes fell upon her husband, who says, "And all these
years you've been thinkin' I've been enjoying meself."

Message of the Day for Dec 9, 2005

October.

This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.

The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.

-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Message of the Day for Dec 8, 2005

Above all else -- sky.

Message of the Day for Dec 7, 2005

I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
-- John Donne

Message of the Day for Dec 6, 2005

My darling wife was always glum.
I drowned her in a cask of rum,
And so made sure that she would stay
In better spirits night and day.

Message of the Day for Dec 5, 2005

Talent does what it can.
Genius does what it must.
You do what you get paid to do.

Message of the Day for Dec 4, 2005

genius, n.:
Person clever enough to be born in the right place at the right
time of the right sex and to follow up this advantage by saying
all the right things to all the right people.

Message of the Day for Dec 3, 2005

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one
wants, and the other is getting it.
-- Oscar Wilde

Message of the Day for Dec 2, 2005

"If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been neccessary to invent it."
-- Karl Lehenbauer