Daily Reminder

In honor of Iron Man II

A random quote from Cracked.com:

The Salone dei Cinquecento in Florence's city hall was commissioned to be adorned by a massive two-part artwork composed by perhaps the two greatest artists¹ who ever walked the Earth. And the contract was signed by Machiavelli. That's like Batman fighting Superman in a cage match refereed by Iron Man.

¹ - Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

But don't diss my Twilight

"So let's let twygones be twygones, people: the world is a rather unsparkly place if you can't laugh a little at the things you claim to love." -hortense

Tick, tock

"Paul Gauguin was a depressed, suicidal stockbroker before he moved to Tahiti at the age of 43 and became a painter. Henri Rousseau was a tax collector until the age of 49; now his paintings hang in the Museum of Modern Art. Gabriel Garcia Marquez didn't write One Hundred Years Of Solitude until he was 40. I do believe it's never too late."
-Dodai Stewart

When the moment is too much

"I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or look forward."
-Londo Mollari in Babylon 5

What you work for

When my friends are doing well in their careers, I find myself not so much jealous of their success, but envious of the fact that they are doing the things necessary to accomplish their goals. I won't accomplish what they have and will accomplish but they are role models for me and inspire me to keep working to achieve my dreams.

I worked on a show fall of 2008 with a man named Matthew Lewis who gave me great advice on a daily basis. He told me once that I could only have my own career, and that others would keep theirs whether I thought I deserved them or not.
-Matt roi Berger

A cookie is worth a thousand words

Also Why Girl Scouts Rarely Get Harassed by the Homeless
Hobo: Hey! Is them cookies good? Is they good?
Commuter, holding bag of cookies: I'll give you a cookie.
Hobo: Thanks, man. What kind of cookies is these?
Commuter: Coconut.
Hobo: Thanks. Hey, can you do me a favor?
Commuter: I gave you a cookie.
Hobo: Yeah...you got me.

--Penn Station
via Overheard in New York, Feb 22, 2009

Self-forgetting

"Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting."
-Eric Hoffer

We have similar grasps on history

Aristotle's Really More Of an American Eagle Dude
Girl #1, leaving the mall: Go to Aero... Ari... Aristotle.
Girl #2: Aristotle is not the same thing as Aeropostale.
Girl #1: Then where did I...?
Girl #2 (interrupting): History. You learned about Aristotle in history.
Overheard by: Ashley

via Overheard Everywhere, Jan 26, 2009

Me and you...

"I don't want to have to do this living. I just walk around. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it."
-Richard Swersey in Me and You and Everyone We Know

The Horror

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

War as Life

"We don't get it. We truly can't imagine what it was like. We can't imagine how dreadful, how terrifying war is, and how normal it becomes. Can't understand, can't imagine. That's what every soldier, and every journalist and aid worker and independent observer who has put in time under fire, and had the luck to elude the death that struck down others nearby, stubbornly feels."
-Susan Sontag

My Playground

There are certain movies that are difficult for me to watch as an adult, despite my immense love for them, because they remind me too much of the childhood dreams that have fallen to the wayside. A League of Their Own is one of those films.

Jimmy Dugan: Taking a little day trip?
Dottie Hinson: No, Bob and I are driving home. To Oregon.
Jimmy Dugan: [long pause] You know, I really thought you were a ballplayer.
Dottie Hinson: Well, you were wrong.
Jimmy Dugan: Was I?
Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all.
Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career to drink. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.
Dottie Hinson: Well, we're different.
Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.

Food for the Middle Class, Bleeding Heart Liberals

This quote is in reference to Hurrican Gustav, currently a Category 3 storm heading towards the Gulf Coast, but I think it explains a lot about the working class, the less-than-rich...

"Lot of folks around here are gonna make do with what they have, and you won't hear a terrible amount of complaining," he said. "You can't just come in here and expect to hear people fussing about how they don't have nothing. People just be used to not having much, and so you don't even think too hard about it until someone starts asking you questions."
-Sidney William

This is not to say I condone attitudes that turn a blind eye to the needs of the less fortunate, that glorify the less wealthy, or that pretend that vast discrepancies in wealth distribution are A-OK. But a lot of people are perfectly content with life and are not angry or bitter because they don't have what other people think they should have.

Food for Thought

"I truly believe that people like myself, who are in a position of entertainers in the limelight, should keep their mouth shut on politics because at the end of the day, I'm good at writing songs and singing. What I'm not educated in is the field of political science. And so for me to be sharing my views and influencing people of who I think they should be voting for ... I think would be very irresponsible on my part."
-Kid Rock

Food for Thought

"john edwards is a chump but bush stole all of our money and killed innocent babies and children and women with it...there's a frickin scandal for ya! and he doesn't even have to answer for it one one hundredth as much as edwards is being assailed for knocking up one slutty showbiz junkie. The media cares more about sneaky sex than about torture death and holocaust."
-Roseanne Barr

Before thinking that people are expendable, remember...

"It's like you think you're safe or something 'cause you can just walk away anytime because you don't like, need her; you don't need anyone. But the thing you didn't realize is, you're wrong." -Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life

No Day But Today

Procrastination is a lot like masturbation: it's a lot of fun until you realize that you just screwed yourself.

I am notorious for my tendency to procrastinate. It has been a lifelong disorder, that when I was younger, had minimal consequences. I managed to do my work well enough to get by okay and often, as many do, found that the urgency of a fast approaching deadline caused me to create work of a relatively high quality. But one often wonders, "What if you approached that work with urgency from day one?"

Part of the problem is that it is easy to get burned out on a project...to quickly lose all affection for it: whether it be a writing project, a cleaning project, a science project, etc. But work, even artistic work, is called work for a reason. It is not easy and it should not necessarily be easy.

What do you want to accomplish in life? Start working on it now! The thing about life is that you don't know when your deadline is. You don't know when it is too late. I am not making a New Year's Resolution. That seems like a guarantee of future failure. No...but I am working daily to begin to live life with a new sense of urgency. I must assume that opportunities will no longer fall into my lap. I must not let those opportunities that do appear, pass me by.

This is an emergency. This need to live the life I want to live is a present need and should not be a dream or a wish. And I will proceed day by day with this knowledge in my heart.

Go boldly in the directions of your dreams; live the life you have imagined. -Henry David Thoreau