We are in trouble...

• The population of this country is 300 million.
• 160 million are retired.
• That leaves 140 million to do the work.
• There are 85 million in school.
• Which leaves 55 million to do the work.
• Of this there are 35 million employed by the federal government.
• Leaving 15 million to do the work.
• 2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied with killing Osama
• Bin-Laden.
• Which leaves 12.2 million to do the work.
• Take from that total the 10.8 million people who work for state and city
• Governments. And that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.
• At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.
• Leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.
• Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.
• That leaves just two people to do the work.
• You and me.
• And there you are,
• Sitting on your derriere,
• At your computer, reading jokes.

THE BIRTH OF A CANDY BAR

One Payday Mr. Goodbar wanted a Bit O'Honey so he took:
Miss Hershey back in the Power house on the corner of Clark & Fifth Ave. He began to feel her Mounds and that was sure Almond Joy which made his Tootsie Roll. He let out a Snicker and his Butterfingers went up her Kit Kat and caused a Milky Way. She screamed "O Henry" and squeezed his Zagnuts. Miss Hershey said you were even better than the Three Musketeers. Soon she was a bit Chunky. Nine months later she had a Baby Ruth.

HEY MERCEDES "Bells" Lyrics

Is this the best you have to offer us?

you genius, your hair mussed

by now you must have heard about the whirling world outside

twist a knife in it, i don't care

drain the life from it, i don't care

if you can fake it you can take them like a photograph.



with a coy sigh in time

your girlfriend's waiting on the line

can't you wait to make her cry?

and they'll remember you alive

as that pain in their unkind invitation tonight

so here's your credit for the lie

that you've been hanging

and over awaiting your reply.



is this the worst you have to peddle us?

scandalous! oh spare us!

by now they must have heard about your worried world inside

pull the covers up, i don't care

call all your lovers up, i don't care

if the fates sing to your face queen of the raincloud club.


I lied when i said we were alike

your best friend's waiting on the line

to compliment your new shine

I can hardly stand to stand here now

to be your stare to admit to all

the pain that you've been painting

and over and i can't bear to stay.

so come on!

sing along!



aren't we bridges aren't we bells?

aren't we chuckling through our curls?

up to heaven and down to hell

say it again pal, aren't we bells?



aren't we statues in a story

where we choose our goals of glory

over family and over friends

say it again and again.


aren't we bridges aren't we bells?

aren't we sighing in our cells?

up to heaven and down to hell

say it again pal, aren't we bells?

aren't we bells?

American Psycho Excerpt

I make no comment, lost in my own private maze, thinking about other things: warrants, stock offerings, ESOPs, LBOs, IPOs,finances, refinances, debentures, converts, proxy statements, 8-Ks, 10-Qs, zero coupons, PiKs, GNPs, the IMF, hot executive gadgets, billionaires, KenkichiNakajima, infinity, Infinity, how fast a luxury car should go, bailouts, junk bonds, whether to cancel my subscription to The Economist, the Christmas Eve when I was fourteen and had raped one of our maids, Inclusivity, envyingsomeone's life, whether someone could survive a fractured skull, waiting inairports, stifling a scream, credit cards and someone's passport and a book ofmatches from La Cote Basque splattered with blood, surface surface surface, a Rolls is a Rolls is a Rolls. To Evelyn our relationship is yellow and blue, but to me it's a gray place, most of it blacked out, bombed, footage from the film in my head is mindless shots of stone and any language heard is utterly foreign,automated tellers, women giving birth through their assholes, embryos frozen or scrambled (which is it?), nuclear warheads, billions of dollars, the total destruction of the world, someone gets beaten up, someone else dies, sometimes bloodlessly, more often mostly by a rifle shot, assassinations, comas, life played out as a sitcom, a blank canvas that reconfigure itself into a soap opera. It's an isolation ward that serves only to expose my own severely impaired capacity to feel. I am at its center, out of season, and no one ever asks me for any identification...

American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis

Sudelbuch ‘J,’ No. 392

A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem is easier still. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding are thus critical to the function of memory. Sense is order and order is in the final analysis conformity with our nature. When we speak reasonably, it is our being and our nature that speaks. When we want to incorporate something into our memory, we always search for a sense or another kind of order as a tool to that end. That is why we utilize the notions of genus and species in the case of plants and animals. The practice of forming hypotheses must be considered in this same light: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would be unable to retain things. And while this is frequently observed, we must return to it again and again. The question is whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment as well as reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introduction of symmetry belongs here too, seeing silhouettes in inkblots, for instance. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: truly, all of this is not to be found in the things themselves, but in us. In general we cannot recall too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.


– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Sudelbuch ‘J,’ No. 392 (1789) in: Schriften und Briefe, vol. 1, p. 710 (W. Promies ed. 1968)(S.H. transl.)

How to Simulate Burning Man (sent via Mother)

1. Pay an escort of your preference to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.
2. Tear down your house. Put it in a truck.
3. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together.
4. Invite everyone you meet to come over and party.
5. When they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.
6. Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room.
7. Put on your most fabulous outfit.
8. Turn the fans on full blast.
9. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
10. Buy a new set of expensive camping gear.
11. Break it.
12. Lean back in a chair until that point where you're just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.
13. Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away.
14. Drain all the water from the toilet.
15. Only flush it every 3 days.
16. Hide all the toilet paper.
17. Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.
18. Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
19. Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.
20. Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls".
21. Blow it up.
22. Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire.
23. Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.
24. Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year.
25. Never look at it.
26. Have a 3 a.m. soul baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.
27. Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body.
28. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.
29. "Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.
30. Don't sleep for 5 days.
31. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs.
32. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.
33. Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume.
34. Never Wear it.
35. Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot while espousing anti-corporate views.
36. Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace" event. Empty your car into a dumpster.
37. Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany.
38. Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy.
39. Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air, and shuffle them back together.
40. Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy.
41. Burn it. Read the ashes.
42. Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream.
43. Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.
44. Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy.
45. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp.
46. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.
47. Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner.
48. Bust your ass for a "community."
49. See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.
50. Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.
51. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.
52. Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway.
53. When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".
54. Search alleys until you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it.
55. Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.
56. Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.

The Parenthesis of Job Postings

“Competitive Salary”
We remain competitive by paying you less than our competition.

“Join our fast-paced company”
We have no time to train you.

“Casual work atmosphere”
We don’t pay enough to expect that you will dress up; a couple of the real daring guys wear earrings.

“Some overtime required”
Some every night and some every weekend.

“Duties will vary”
Anyone in the office can boss you around.

“Must have an eye for detail”
We have no quality assurance.

“Career-minded”
Female applicants must be childless (and remain that way).

“Apply in person”
If you’re old, fat or ugly you’ll be told that the position has been filled.

“Seeking candidates with a wide variety of experience”
You’ll need it to replace the three people who just quit.

“Problem-solving skills a must”
You’re walking into perpetual chaos.

“Requires team leadership skills”
You’ll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect.

“Good communication skills”
Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do it.

In the beginning, God created the Bit and the Byte

And from those he created the Word.

And there were two Bytes in the Word; and nothing else existed. And God separated the One from the Zero; and he saw it was good.

And God said - Let the Data be; And so it happened. And God said - Let the Data go to their proper places. And he created floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks.

And God said - Let the computers be, so there would be a place to put floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks. Thus God created computers and called them hardware.

And there was no Software yet. But God created programs; small and big… And told them - Go and multiply yourselves and fill all the Memory.

And God said - I will create the Programmer; And the Programmer will make new programs and govern over the computers and programs and Data.

And God created the Programmer; and put him at Data Center; And God showed the Programmer the Catalog Tree and said You can use all the volumes and subvolumes but do not use Windows.

And God said - It is not good for the programmer to be alone. He took a bone from the Programmer’s body and created a creature that would look up at the Programmer; and admire the Programmer; and love the things the Programmer does; And God called the creature: the User.

And the Programmer and the User were left under the naked DOS and it was Good.

But Bill was smarter than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to the User - Did God really tell you not to run any programs?

And the User answered - God told us that we can use every program and every piece of Data but told us not to run Windows or we will die.

And Bill said to the User - How can you talk about something you did not even try. The moment you run Windows you will become equal to God. You will be able to create anything you like by a simple click of your mouse.

And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were nicer and easier to use. And the User saw that any knowledge was useless–since Windows could replace it.

So the User installed the Windows on his computer; and said to the Programmer that it was good.

And the Programmer immediately started to look for new drivers. And God asked him–What are you looking for? And the Programmer answered–I am looking for new drivers because I can not find them in the DOS. And God said - Who told you need drivers? Did you run Windows? And the Programmer said - It was Bill who told us to!

And God said to Bill - Because of what you did, you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be unhappy with you. And you will always sell Windows.

And God said to the User - Because of what you did, the Windows will disappoint you and eat up all your Resources; and you will have to use lousy programs; and you will always rely on the Programmers help.

And God said to the Programmer - Because you listened to the User, you will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to fix them and fix them to the end of time.

And God threw them out of the Data Center and locked the door and secured it with a password.

She was so blond...

…she spent 20 minutes looking at the orange juice box because it said “concentrate”.

…she put lipstick on her forehead because she wanted to make up her mind.

…she got stabbed in a shoot-out.

…she told me to meet her at the corner of “WALK” and “DON'T WALK”.

…she thought TuPac Shakur was a Jewish holiday.

…she tried to put M&M’s in alphabetical order.

…she sat on the TV and watched the couch.

…she sent me a fax with a stamp on it.

…she tried to drown a fish.

…she thought a quarterback was a refund.

…she got locked in a grocery store and starved to death.

…if you gave her a penny for intelligence, you’d get change back.

…they had to burn the school down to get her out of third grade.

…under “education” on her job application, she put “Hooked On Phonics”.

…she tripped over a cordless phone.

…she took a ruler to bed to see how long she slept.

…at the bottom of the application where it says “sign here”.. she put “Sagittarius”.

…she asked for a price check at the Dollar Store.

…it takes her two hours to watch 60 Minutes.

…if she spoke her mind, she’d probably be speechless.

…she studied for a blood test …and failed.

…she thought Boyz II Men was a daycare center.

…she thought Meow Mix was a record for cats.

…she thought she needed a token to get on Soul Train.

…she sold the car for gas money.

…when she saw the “NC-17″ (under 17 not admitted), she went home and got 16 friends.

…when she heard that 90% of all crimes occur around the home, she moved.

…she thinks Taco Bell is where you pay your phone bill.

…when she missed the 44 bus, she took the 22 bus twice instead.

…when she took you to the airport and saw a sign that said “Airport Left” she turned around and went home.

Office Vs Prison

IN PRISON - you spend the majority of your time in an 10x10 foot cell.
IN OFFICE - spend the majority of your time in an 8x8 foot cubicle.

IN PRISON - you get three meals a day.
IN OFFICE - you get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.

IN PRISON - you get time off for good behavior.
IN OFFICE

IN PRISON - all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required.
IN OFFICE - you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

IN PRISON - you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
IN OFFICE - you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

IN PRISON - you must deal with sadistic wardens.
IN OFFICE - they are called managers.

Stuff White People Like

LMAO

MJ for ADHD and ADD

PEZ — You ROCK!

From the desk of Elliot Spitzer


As you may be aware, the Bush Administration indicated that many of us will soon get a nice rebate

If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China

If we spend it on gasoline, it will all go to the Arabs

If we spend it on fruit and vegetables, it will all go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala

If we purchase a good car, it will all go to Japan

If we purchase useless crap, it will all go to Taiwan, and none of it will help the American economy

We need to keep that money here in America; the only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes, gambling and beer... since those are the few businesses still thriving in the United States of America.

My name is Elliot Spitzer, and I approved this message.

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

WISCONSIN FARM
You have thousands of cows who make great cheese, drink beer, ice-fish, snowmobile, and hunt.
They all want to know if Bret Farve is going to play another year.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Cool Video News Microbrowser

Dimitri Martin Flip Charts

Terrorist Bloopers

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Jokes (EXPLICIT)

Q: How do we know Vice President Dick Cheney has a clean conscience?
A: He’s never used it.

Q: What was President George W. Bush’s position on Roe v. Wade?
A: He didn’t care how the people got out of New Orleans.

Q: What is the difference between the U.S. Congress and the Library of Congress?
A: In the Library of Congress, you aren’t allowed to lick the pages.

Q: What’s a serial killer’s best pickup line?
A: Excuse me. Does this napkin smell like chloroform to you?

Q: Why did the Polack spend all night outside the whorehouse?
A: He was waiting for the red light to turn green.

Q: Why don’t blondes make good cattle herders?
A: Because they can’t even keep two calves together.

Q: Did you hear about the midget who wanted everyone to know he was gay?
A: He came out of the cupboard.

Q: What did the deaf guy say to the nympho?
A: Come again?

Q: What do you call a guy with syphilis, herpes and gonorrhea?
A: An incurable romantic.

Q: What’s the square root of 69?
A: Eight something.

Q: Why did the gay man think his lover was cheating on him?
A: His partner came home shit-faced.

From Dr Deadalus by Mark Rosen

"Rosen's ideas and aspirations are frightening to me because they are such vivid, visceral examples of a certain postmodern or perhaps, more precisely put, post-authentic sensibility we embrace and fear as we pop our Prozacs and Ritalins and then decide to be Jewish and then Episcopalian and then chant with the monks on the same Himalayan mountain via a cheap plane ticket we purchased between jobs and just before we sold our condo in a market rising so fast that when it falls if will sound like all of the precious China plates crashing down from the cabinet - a mess! What a mess!

Until recently, no more than a single major ideological shift was likely to occur in a lifetime, and that one would be long remembered for its conflict and soul-searching. But today it is unusual for several such shifts to take place within a year or even a month, whether in the realm of politics, religion, aesthetic values, personal relationships... quite rare is the man or woman who has gone through life holding firmly to a single ideological vision. More usual is a tendency toward ideological fragments, bits and pieces of belief systems that allow for shifts, revisions, and recombinations."

Bells by Hey Mercedes

Is this the best you have to offer us?
you genius, your hair mussed
by now you must have heard about the whirling world outside
twist a knife in it, i don't care
drain the life from it (I don't care)
if you can fake it you can take them like a photograph.

With a coy sigh in time
your girlfriend's waiting on the line
can't you wait to make her cry?
And they'll remember you alive
as that pain in their unkind invitation tonight
so here's your credit for the lie
that you've been hanging
and over awaiting your reply.

is this the worst you have to peddle us?
scandalous! oh spare us!
by now they must have heard about your worried world inside
pull the covers up, i don't care
call all your lovers up, i don't care
if the fates sing to your face queen of the raincloud club.

i lied when i said we were alike
your best friend's waiting on the line
to compliment your new shine
i can hardly stand to stand here now
to be your stare to admit to all
the pain that you've been painting
and over and i can't bear to stay.

so come on!
sing along!
aren't we chuckling through our curls?
(up to heaven and down to hell)
say it again pal, aren't we bells?

aren't we statues in a story
where we choose our goals of glory
over family and over friends
say it again and again.

aren't we bridges aren't we bells?
aren't we sighing in our cells?
up to heaven and down to hell
say it again pal, aren't we bells?
aren't we bells?

To Dream of Pigs Quotes

Nearing Pusan the railway joined the coast. A rusting coaster sat impaled on the rocks, its holded bow rearing out of the water like a frozen fish gaping for air. In a cove beyond the ever-present security fence white-vested soldiers went through their knee-jerks. The train swung round a headland, exposing mile upon mile of white, rectangular, apartment blocks, like cigarette packets standing end to end. It was my first glimpse of Pusan.

Pusan is South Korea's largest port and second largest city, with a population of four million. It lies at the south-east corner of the Republic, diagonally opposite of Seoul, and is the stepping-off point for the Japanese port of Shimonoseki. Unlike Seoul, which bore the brunt of the changing fortunes of the Korean War, Pusan was never occupied by communist forces and bears none of the visible scars of war. It did, however, in the darkest days of 1950, accomodate four million refugees fleeing from Kim Il Sung, many of whom stayed on. Pusan's cosmopolitanism and refugee legacy saddles the city with the reputation of criminal hotspot.

...Pusan is long and twisted. Its major thoroughfares choke with traffic at all hours. On the map the city resembles a misappen tree, stunted branches spilling outwards.


Any charms Pusan posessed did not reveal themselves lightly. Before the Olympic Games yachtsmen complained about the polluted waters of Suyong Bay, close to a favorite tourist area. Floating garbage threatened to rip off the rudders, and crews refused to enter the water to clean their hulls. This prompted an unprecidented change to Olympic rules, permission being given for the boats to be rasied from the water and cleaned on land.

Nor does Pusan earn brownie points for its official bumph, wish is full of Doland Duck English - excusable, comical and even lovable elsewhere, but not in a city of Pusan's resources. 'The beloved trade mark of Pusan is among Koreans,' declaired one tourist pamphlet, nonsensically.

Pusan seemed even more compressed than Seoul, its hills close and more claustrophobic, its traffic still slower.

Waiting at a bus-stop one blustery evening I was treated to the force of Pusan's stink. Korean drains are covered by paving stones with cut-away hand-holes at either end. The hand-holes permit a free view of the passing sewage and ample opportunity to inhale its stench.

He was aggrivated at Korea's obsession with filching tourists as a means of demonstrating her modernity. He examined my entrance ticket and remarked upon its expense. Not the expense of buying it, but of making it - glossy paper with colour pictures. They were always like this in Korea. Bus tickets would have sufficed, at a fraction of the cost, except that in Korea appearances are everything.

It was, perhaps, disadvantageous to visit Korea after having known Japan, for Japan presents most Western visitors with a shattering dose of culture shock. Korea is subtler, more restrained, offering little to compete with Japan's sheer spectacle - for example, Japan's Sumo wrestlers, her tea economy, lava baths, awesome Mt. Fuji, love hotels, bullet trains, pachinko parlours, street bunting, dragon dances, A-bomb museums in Hiroshima and Nakasaki, the dawn calls of her sweet potato sellers.

Korea's culture has absorbed so much from China, Japan and America, and lost so much through erosion, banishment, and subjugation, that, to her detractors, little remains that can be called truly Korean, other than her ondol underfoot heating, her hangul language, and her kimchi. Korea, I felt, is enjoyed not by seeing but by being. The name 'Chosun' (Land of Morning Calm) hints at the softness of her real charm. A night out in provincial Korea is to wander the market-place or stroll the waterside in some fishing port.

Quotes

There is no praise in being upright, where no one can, or tries to corrupt you.
[Latin: Nulla est laus ibi esse integrum, ubi nemo est, qui aut possit aut conetur rumpere.]
— Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
— George Bernard Shaw

So may the outward shows be least themselves; The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
— William Shakespeare

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
— Henry Cate Vii

Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
— Ambrose Pierce

I am not anti-American. But I am strongly pro-Canadian.
— John G. Diefenbaker

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear.
— Alan Coren

What a crazy world we live in! Trying to treat addiction as a legal problem, and trying to treat criminal misbehaviors using guns as a medical problem! Beam me up, Scotty. Ain't no intelligent life down here.
— Julie Cochrane

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
— Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

Fascism is capitalism in decay.
— Lenin (vladimir Ulyanov)

A thief believes everybody steals.
— E.W. Howe

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
— Philip Zimmermann

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency. The second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity. Both bring a permanent ruin.

History, a distillation of rumor.
— Thomas Carlyle Topic: History

Money can't buy happiness; it can, however, rent it.
— Anonymous

The way to resumption is to resume.
— Salmon Portland Chase

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
—Indira Gandhi

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries. —Harry S. Truman Source: None

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.
— Harry S. Truman

Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world's first overcommunicated society. Each year we send more and receive less.
— Al Ries

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
— Joseph Priestley

To be adult is to be alone.
— Jean Rostand

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.
— Eugene O'neill

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
— Mitchell Kapor

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'.
— Dave Parnas

Art and science have their meeting point in method.
— Paul Dirac

It is useless to send armies against ideas.
— George Brandes

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
— James Anthony Froude

A satellite has no conscience.
— Edward R. Murrow

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
— Alfred North Whitehead

The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.
— Eugene Debs

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
— Adlai E. Stevenson

If you don't double-click me, I can't do anything.
— Anonymous

We're all living in a chemical soup.
— Lance A. Wallace

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history—with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
— Mitch Ratliffe

An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.
— Henri-frederic

640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody.
— Bill Gates

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
— Heinrich Heine

URLs are the 800 numbers of the 1990's.
— Chris Clark

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
— Lawrence J. Peter

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
— John Perry Barlow

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
— Alexis De Tocqueville

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
— Walter Bagehot

The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and human stupidity.
— Unknown

Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.
— George Bernard Shaw

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
— Elbert Hubbard

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
— Joseph Snipp

Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on!
—Andrew Brown

Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?
— Steve Polyak

You know you've achieved perfection in design, Not when you have nothing more to add, But when you have nothing more to take away.
— Antoine De Saint-exupery

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.
— Ralph Bunche

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.
— Howard Mumford Jones

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.
— Charles Francis Kettering

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
— Jim Harkins

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
— Albert Einstein

Expecting a carjacker or rapist or drug pusher to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces. - "Usenet posting in talk.politics.guns".
— Joseph T. Chew

Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns.
— Anonymous

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency. The second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity. Both bring a permanent ruin.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
— Mitch Ratliffe

An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.
— Henri-frederic

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
— Lawrence J. Peter

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
— Walter Bagehot

Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.
— George Bernard Shaw

Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on!
— Andrew Brown

All art exists in the gap between physical object and human experience.

American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)

I make no comment, lost in my own private maze, thinking about other things: warrants, stock offerings, ESOPs, LBOs, IPOs, finances, refinances, debentures, converts, proxy statements, 8-Ks, 10-Qs, zero coupons, PiKs, GNPs, the IMF, hot executive gadgets, billionaires, KenkichiNakajima, infinity, Infinity, how fast a luxury car should go, bailouts, junk bonds, whether to cancel my subscription to The Economist, the Christmas Eve when I was fourteen and had raped one of our maids, Inclusivity, envyingsomeone's life, whether someone could survive a fractured skull, waiting inairports, stifling a scream, credit cards and someone's passport and a book ofmatches from La Cote Basque splattered with blood, surface surface surface, a Rolls is a Rolls is a Rolls. To Evelyn our relationship is yellow and blue, but to me it's a gray place, most of it blacked out, bombed, footage from the film in my head is mindless shots of stone and any language heard is utterly foreign,automated tellers, women giving birth through their assholes, embryos frozen or scrambled (which is it?), nuclear warheads, billions of dollars, the total destruction of the world, someone gets beaten up, someone else dies, sometimes bloodlessly, more often mostly by a rifle shot, assassinations, comas, life played out as a sitcom, a blank canvas that reconfigure itself into a soap opera. It's an isolation ward that serves only to expose my own severely impaired capacity to feel. I am at its center, out of season, and no one ever asks me for any identification...

Saramago (Blindness)

They were proclaiming the end of the world, redemption through penitence, the visions of the seventh day, the advent of the angel, cosmic collisions, the death of the sun, the tribal spirit, the sap of the mandrake, tiger ointment, the virtue of the sign, the discipline of the wind, the perfume of the moon, the re-vindication of darkness, the power of exorcism, the sign of the heel, the crucifixion of the rose, the purity of lymph, the blood of the black cat, the sleep of the shadow, the rising of the seas, the logic of anthropophagy, painless castration, divine tattoos, voluntary blindness, convex thoughts, or concave, or horizontal or vertical, or sloping, or concentrated, or dispersed, or fleeting, the weakening of the vocal chords, the death of the word...

Phil-Osophies

• Sarcasm is irritating and unsettling and should be used frequently.
• Save a dollar a day and some day you'll be sorry it wasn't two dollars.
• If you say something stupid and no one disagrees, then you know you're the boss.
• Variety is the spice of divorce.
• An egotist is a disgusting, low person who is more interested in himself than he is in me.
• The better the opportunity appears to be, the more likely it is that you don't know all the facts.
• If everyone agrees with me I reconsider.
• Sometimes it is necessary to repeat yourself to make a point. Sometimes.
• Just because you call the shots doesn't mean you're at the right end of the barrel.
• We only owe our children two things: love and hope.
• Never repress anything but your pants.
• Iíd rather be lonely alone than lonely with somebody else.
• I DO understand youóthatís the problem.
• Always take the road less traveled--unless itís through Gary, Indiana.
• If you want to make someone hate you, explain to them, logically and politely, why they are wrong.
• I wash and wear the pants in my family.
• It is dangerous to be right when the boss is wrong.
• I can handle criticism so long as it isnít about me.
• When the heart is full, the head is empty.
• The two most common reasons for losing are: not knowing you're competing in the first place, and not knowing with whom you really are competing.
• We're all a little nearsighted and must take a step back to see things more clearly.
• The best way to kill someone's enthusiasm is to tell them "yes".
• Shit in a giftbox is still shit.
• When your competitionís sleeping, itís best to tiptoe bye.
• You can make your own omelet: either scramble your brains with drugs and alcohol, or just keep your sunny side up.
• Thank God there are only 10 Commandments!
• I don't mind sleeping on an empty stomach so long as it isn't my own.
• Life is only in balance if you play as hard as you work.
• If you stop to consider all the options before you act, you will always know what to do next time.
• "Tact" is when the mind says, "Go to hell!" but the mouth says, "Hope to see you again, real soon."
• Listen to your heart, but use your brain when you open your mouth.
• Don't come on too strong when you hold the winning hand or you'll find yourself playing solitaire.
• The biggest problem with stupid people is they don't know it.
• Friendship, love, success...you can have each only to the extent you are willing to compromise the other two.
• Being worse is no excuse for losing.
• The only thing you can be sure of in New York is death in taxis.
• The stepping stones of life are often made of flesh.
• There are two kinds of people in this world: dumb people; really dumb people; and really, really dumb people.
• There's nothing wrong with promiscuity that a fatal disease wouldn't cure.
• If everyone likes you, you must be doing something wrong.
• There are many ways to measure success, but only one you can spend.
• Spare the rod.
• The only people you should admit your transgressions to are your great, great grandchildren.
• Peace of mind grows in my garden.
• The deeper the thought the more I want a beer.
• You can't win if he has nothing to lose.
• If you don't laugh at yourself once in a while, others will.
• Love goes without saying.
• If you can't find the tune, it's classical. If you find it and lose it, it's jazz.
• What you are is more important than who you are.
• Being divorced means knowing how to maintain a rejection.
• Even your favorite dessert tastes bitter if it's shoved down your throat.
• If success does not buy happiness, what's the point of being happy?
• There's an inverse relationship between availability and desirability.
• If you want people to remember you, tell them something really interesting about them.
• If you canít beat 'em, don't play 'em.
• "Thank you, I would like a banana," is the most you should tell your competitor.
• You are where you eat.
• No matter what the subject, be passionate about it, or forget it.
• An empty closet is the devilís playground.
• Pulling your weight is smarter than pushing your luck.
• If you don't love yourself neither will anyone else.
• Honesty is the best foreplay.
• All I want is someone to hold me. And pay me for it.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Sudelbuch J

A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem is easier still. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding are thus critical to the function of memory. Sense is order and order is in the final analysis conformity with our nature. When we speak reasonably, it is our being and our nature that speaks. When we want to incorporate something into our memory, we always search for a sense or another kind of order as a tool to that end. That is why we utilize the notions of genus and species in the case of plants and animals. The practice of forming hypotheses must be considered in this same light: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would be unable to retain things. And while this is frequently observed, we must return to it again and again. The question is whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment as well as reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introduction of symmetry belongs here too, seeing silhouettes in inkblots, for instance. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: truly, all of this is not to be found in the things themselves, but in us. In general we cannot recall too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.

– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Sudelbuch ‘J,’ No. 392 (1789) in: Schriften und Briefe, vol. 1, p. 710 (W. Promies ed. 1968)(S.H. transl.)

Girlfriend 1.0

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog, leaving very little system resources available for other applications. He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before).

During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

Some features he'd like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.

• A "Don't remind me again" button
• Minimize button
• An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 be installed with the option to uninstall at anytime without the loss of cache and other system resources.

I myself decided to avoid the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug that I should have known about. You'd think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.(Editorial comment: The uninstall button should have an added feature. Upon activation, the user's joystick should be permanently disabled - What do you think? Too harsh?). Another thing: all versions of Girlfriend continually pop up little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.

BUG WARNING

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

More applications that won't run with Wife 1.0 include Golfing 2.3, Softball 3.6, and Cubgamewatching 2.7. Applications that run very well with Wife 1.0, however, include Fixthis 1.1, Waitforme 3.5, and Couldupickthisuponthewayhome 5.7!