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KGB ReportObservations by and for the vaguely disenchanted by Kevin G. Barkes |
ISSN: 1525-898X |
Mitt Romney is going to release his 2010 and 2011 tax returns. Not to be
outdone, Newt Gingrich is going to release his 1988, 1994, and 2005
wedding vows.
–Conan O'Brien
Categories: Conan O'Brien; Mitt Romney; Newt Gingrich; Quotes of the day
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John Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009):
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
All blessings are mixed blessings.
All men are boys time is trying to outsmart.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is.
Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
I imagine most stuff on the information highway is road kill anyway.
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.
Now that I am 60, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.
School is where you go between when your parents can't take you, and industry can't take you.
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
Categories: John Updike; Quotes of the day
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The good news: the medications significantly reduced Misty's blood pressure, intraocular pressure, and inflammation to the point she apppears to be in little or no pain. The doctor deferred removing her eye today.
The bad news: Misty's secondary glaucoma may be caused by systemic hypertension, which in turn may be caused by kidney disease. More specific tests have been done and sent to the lab. It'll be a few days until we get the results.
But for now, at least, I have a warm, happy, pain-free Sheltie and her three pack mates snoring comfortably at my feet.
I'm officially declaring: that this a good day; that Misty is a very, very good girl; and that, at least for today, I'm one lucky fella.
Categories: Dogs; KGB Family
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William Somerset Maugham, (January 25, 1874 – December 16, 1965)
A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort that it values more, it will lose that too.
If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be so grossly over-populated as it is now.
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
Money is like a sixth sense-and you can't make use of the other five without it.
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
The contrast between a man's professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers.
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune and willingly avoids the sight of distress.
There are three rules for writing a novel; unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
Categories: Quotes of the day; William Somerset Maugham
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Dick Tufeld, best known as the voice of The Robot in the 60s Lost in Space television series and 90s film of the same name, died Sunday. He was 86.
Tufeld's career spanned six decades and included major announcing roles with ABC television and Disney.
This is one of the many tributes to Tufeld. It's worth the trip.
Categories: Passages
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At the psychiatrist's office: Perhaps this isn't the best place for this painting, especially if your practice contains any paranoids...
Categories: KGB; Observation of the Day; Photo of the day; WTF?
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A typical day surfing the web...
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Apparently? Apparently?!
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Categories: Photo of the day
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Cindy pointed out this morning that due to my error, we've been drinking decaf coffee since Monday. Now I understand why I've been dragging all week. Problem corrected, and several pots later I'm ready to go outside and face the world.
And I will, as soon as my toes uncurl and I can put on my shoes.
Categories: Observation of the Day
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DeForest Kelley, who played the curmudgeonly Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the original Star Trek series, was born on this day in 1920 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the first member of the original Star Trek cast to pass away, on June 11, 1999, at the age of 79.
Initially approached for the role of the Vulcan science officer Mr. Spock, Kelley was instead cast as the ship's chief medical officer, described by series creator Gene Roddenberry as "a future-day H.L. Mencken". An unabashed cynic of technology, the McCoy character was a self-described old fashioned country doctor who put more faith in humanity than high technology.
In a 1982 interview with author Allan Asherman, Kelley said McCoy represented "the perspective of the audience, that if you were along on the voyage you'd think, 'These people are crazy! How in the hell do they expect to do that?'" Indeed, the McCoy character was often used to interject a dose of reality, interpret the techno-babble, and explain the frequently convoluted plotting of the more arcane Trek adventures to those in the audience struggling to follow the science fiction storylines.
His summary of the plot of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, delivered in exasperated disbelief to the gung-ho Captain Kirk, still stands as one of the best examples of exposition in screen history:
"You're proposing that we go backwards in time, find humpbacked whales, then bring them forward in time, drop 'em off, and hope to hell they tell this probe what to go do with itself?!" The entire plot in fewer than 35 words. That's Bones for you.
The son of a Baptist minister, Jackson DeForest Kelley wanted to be a doctor like an uncle he greatly admired, but his family couldn't afford to send him to medical school. He instead became a character actor who worked steadily in film and television from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Star Trek's popularity in syndication essentially ended his acting career, but he considered himself fortunate to be associated with a role that made him a permanent icon in popular culture, and he made a comfortable living by reprising his character for the motion picture series and appearing on the convention circuit.
Asherman's interview ended with a quote that could serve as an accurate and fitting epitaph:
"I'd wanted to be a physician and couldn't- and yet became the most well-known doctor in the galaxy."
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Under SOPA, you could get five years for uploading a Michael Jackson
song, one year more than the doctor who killed him.
-Postsecret
Categories: Quotes of the day
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Betty White (b. January 17, 1922):
"I love everything with a leg on each corner, but the human animal is a vengeful creature, and we wish very bad things for other human animals."
My favorite Betty White bit, from just two years ago, is here.
Categories: Betty White; Birthdays; Quotes of the day; SNL; Video
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Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. (January 27, 1919 – January 16, 1972), aka David Seville, creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, was the cousin of writer William Saroyan. Bagdasarian and Saroyan wrote the song "Come on-a My House" in 1939, which became a hit when it was recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1951.
Categories: Music; Trivia of the day; Video; YouTube
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We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
One of 15,062 quotations from the KGB Quotations Database, selected at random. Click here to search for words, authors or phrases. Search page design and software contributed by Rafal Sulejman.
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