KGB Report

Star Trek: Into Insipidity

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:14:44 -0400

Star Trek: Into Darkness is aggressively, egregiously, purposefully, intentionally, maliciously stupid.

A certain suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to watch science fiction of any kind, and Star Trek is no exception. But Star Trek generally limited itself to extrapolations of existing technology and scientific theory, and the techno-babble whatsits still had to function within a known universe with well-defined laws of physics.

(Warning: there are spoilers ahead.)

One wonders if those responsible for this abomination took a copy of the script from Star Trek II, a script rejected from Lost in Space, shuffled them together, and filmed the result.

J.J. Abrams' original 2009 reboot also contained major errors, but that film was entertaining enough that the gaffes didn't come to mind until you were in your car, on your way home from the theater.

The plot holes is this stinker dragged me out of the movie in the very opening scene, and from that point on, things just got worse.

The movie starts on the planet Nibiru, which is also the name of the fictional planet that was supposed to kill us all during the Mayan Apocalypse.

"Hi, I'm J.J. Abrams, and we're starting off by naming this planet 'Nibiru' just to let you know we're deliberately thumbing our nose at science in general and Star Trek in particular, which we never liked. The whole movie is like this. This is one colossal in-joke. Don't forget to visit the concession stand."

They have to lower a guy on a rope into a volcano because some kind of magnetic interference from the volcano messes with the transporter. The rope breaks, and the guy and the doohickey that's going to turn off the volcano fall into the crater. The guy and the doohickey survive. Why not just drop the doohickey into the volcano in the first place and be done with it?

In the 23rd century, humans apparently have developed the ability to jump and/or fall 50-100 foot distances without sustaining injuries. They are also all long-distance runners.

The Enterprise is a space ship. Roddenberry's explicit design requirements were "no fins or rockets."

This Enterprise has more flaming ports than a busload of tourists eating at a Taco Bell.

It's probably safe to assume Roddenberry didn't envision starships and shuttlecraft would be interchangeable with submarines, either.

In the future, military experts charged with the safety of the planet will meet, unarmed, in buildings with no security, in rooms with large picture windows.

The bad guy may be superhuman and have lots of guns, but he can't hit the side of a Nibiruian barn. Too bad he didn't have another one of those magic fizzy explosive class rings.

Despite other advances in technology, firefighting still relies on hoses, strategically placed so they can be hurled into the turbine intakes of 23rd century shuttles.

Question: if you can use a super-duper transwarp transporter to beam yourself from earth to a planet light years away, isn't it kind of dumb to waste all that money building a star fleet? And lucky for him there were no magnetic volcanoes in the way?

We need to wake up this guy who's been in suspended animation for 300 years so he can design advanced weapons for us. Just imagine if we could somehow bring Thomas Newcomen from 1712 to the present. He could show us how to build a steam engine!

I swear that was a red-skinned Admiral Ackbar sitting at the station in the brig. Another Abrams joke? ("It's a trap. Also, wait until you see what I do to Star Wars.")

I'm a doctor and a scientist, which is why I injected blood from a 300 year old mutated human into a dead tribble for absolutely no reason, a species from a totally different planet with totally dissimilar biology and by the way, did I mention it was already dead? And why did we bring the movie to a freaking stop to point this out to you? It's a little thing we learned in writing school called "foreshadowing." Aren't we clever?

When Scotty disabled the weapon systems on the bad guy's ship he could have also disabled their shields, so Kirk and whatshisname could have just beamed on over instead of doing that dangerous space-suited jump between the vessels. Well yeah, but then we couldn't put in our homage to the asteroid scene in The Empire Strikes Back. And also, Mr. Smart Guy, the bad starship was powered by a cold fusion magnetic volcano that would have blocked the transporter anyway. Pbpbpbpbt.

"To really piss off the science nerds, we're going to make a reference about being 238,000 kilometers from earth and then place the ships next to the moon, which is 238,000 *miles* from earth. Later we'll make some clever joke about even NASA getting the two confused. Oh, and screw you, science fans."

Those 72 super-duper torpedoes which blew up simultaneously inside the bad starship were neither super nor duper, because not only did they not destroy the bad guys, they allowed the ship to make it through earth's atmosphere without burning up, take out Alcatraz, and mess up all those nice Bay-view apartment buildings. Yeah, the same folks in charge of Starfleet security also run Earth's planetary defense system.

Even assuming the ships were caught by Earth's gravity, one expects it would take slightly more than ten minutes for them to cover the distance between the moon and the earth. That would make their velocity 1.5 million miles per hour or over 400 miles per second. Objects entering the atmosphere at that speed explode and/or incinerate.

This Enterprise is designed like an 80s Hyatt hotel, with a big atrium and, one presumes, a food court that didn't appear because Orange Julius wouldn't sign the contract.

23rd century starships have engineering sections which apparently also have the ability to brew large quantities of beer in massive tanks.

Speaking of tanks, when the guys are hanging from one of the ubiquitous engineering catwalks and a big one goes whizzing past, my wife noted they had not only lost warp drive, but also had no hot water.

In the first movie, they were able to beam two people falling at escape velocity from the surface of a planet being imploded by the massive, constantly-changing gravitational field of a red-matter generated black hole. This time around, they couldn't differentiate between Dr. McCoy and a torpedo (both are blunt and explosive?) or pull Spock and the bad guy from a flying vehicle. Wait- is there a magnetic volcano near here?

23rd century matter/anti-matter warp drive engine design is a lot like that of 70s Volkswagen Beetle engines, in that you can get both to function optimally by repeatedly kicking them.

Hey, remember that we discovered there was something in this guy's blood that can cure incurable illnesses and bring people back from the dead? Shouldn't we be working on this? Or do magnetic volcano-resistant transporters get higher priority?

Note I haven't said anything about the lifted dialogue or the stolen and abused plot lines from previous movies.

One can only hope that some persons who see this film will decide to take a look at Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and realize Star Trek was intended to be entertainment for thinking grown-ups, not the burlesque Abrams perpetrated in what is hopefully his last dubious contribution to a once dignified franchise.

It's madness...

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:09:29 -0400

A long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.
-Charles Manson

All things considered, insanity is the only alternative.
-Unattributed

Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
-H.P. Lovecraft

America's always been a great place to be crazy. It just used to be harder to make a living that way.
-Charles Pierce

Being crazy isn't enough.
-Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)

Don't call me irrational. It makes me crazy when you do that.
-Unattributed (From the TV series Frasier)

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
-William Dement

Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
-Steve Landesberg

I am not insane, you just have no context.
-Velut Luna

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
-Unattributed

I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.
-S.J. Perelman

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
-Hunter S. Thompson

I plead contemporary insanity. (T-shirt)
-Unattributed

I sent my desk calendar to a psychiatrist. The schedule was insane.
-Carol Simpson

I'll take crazy over stupid any day.
-Joss Whedon

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an "information highway," but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.
-Mike Royko

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
-John Steinbeck

If you spend all of your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.
-Scott Adam

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
-Hunter S. Thompson

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers, but creative artists very seldom.
-G.K. Chesterton

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.
-J.G. Ballard

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
-Oscar Wilde

In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.
-Johnny Carson

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
-Nora Ephron

Insanity in the individual is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Insanity is contagious.
-Joseph Heller

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
-Rita Mae Brown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a raise.
-Robert Brault

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind over-taxed.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.
-Ray Bradbury

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
-Philip K. Dick

Madness may be a sane response to an insane world, and insanity breeds special perceptions.
-R.D. Laing

Madness takes it toll. Please have exact change.
-Unattributed

Memory is a crazy woman who hoards colored rags and throws away food.
-Austin O'Malley

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.
-Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)

Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics.
-Susan Sontag

Mothers are all slightly insane.
-J.D. Salinger

My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
-Spike Milligan

My grandmother was insane. She had pierced hearing aids.
-Steven Wright

Never tell a crazy person he's crazy.
-Tina Fey

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions.
-Henry Ward Beecher

No sane man will dance.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.
-G.K. Chesterton

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
-Robert Anton Wilson

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
-Heinrich Heine

Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane.
-Scott Adams

Sanity is a cozy lie.
-Susan Sontag

Sanity is an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency.
-N.F. Simpson

Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected.
-Robert Pirsig

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-Carl Jung

Some are born mad. Some remain so.
-Samuel Beckett

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.
-Hunter S. Thompson

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sunday is the day people go quietly mad, one way or another.
-William Saroyan

The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you.
-Unattributed

The mass of mankind is divided into two classes- the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for reality, but no ideals; and, the Don Quixotes, with a sense for ideals, but mad.
-George Santayana

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to be insane in such a useful way that they can't commit you.
-Mark Edwards

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
-Rita Mae Brown

There are worse things than being mad.
-Jack Kerouac

There is a pleasure sure,
In being mad, which none
but madmen know!
-John Dryden

There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-Oscar Levant

This country was founded by religious nuts with guns.
-P.J. O'Rourke

This is a mournful discovery.
1) Those who agree with you are insane
2) Those who do not agree with you are in power.
-Philip K. Dick

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who did not hear the music.
-Angela Monet

To be crazy is not necessarily to writhe in snake pits or converse with imaginary gods. It can sometimes be not knowing what to do in the morning.
-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
-Henrik Tikkanen

Warning: the Internet may contain traces of nuts.
-Unattributed

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
-John Updike

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
-Hermann Hesse

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
-Dave Barry

When you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.
-Alan Moore

Would it not be more economical for the governments to build asylums for the sane instead of the demented?
-Kahlil Gibran

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the United States of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war.
-Unattributed

You're only given a little spark of madness; you mustn't lose it.
-Robin Williams

Quotes of the day: Tina Fey

Sat, 18 May 2013 06:33:13 -0400

Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey (born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedienne, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, the critically acclaimed NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and such films as Mean Girls, Baby Mama, Date Night, and Admission. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)

-----

Confidence is ten percent hard work and 90 percent delusion.

Gay people don't actually try to convert people. That's Jehovah's Witnesses you're thinking of.

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society... unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

I learned quickly that trying to force Country Folk to love the Big City is like telling your gay cousin, "You just haven't met the right girl yet."

I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did- Traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there.

I think God designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave.

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: who cares?

If you're ever feeling really good about yourself, there's this thing called the Internet.

It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove it doesn't exist.

It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV.

Never tell a crazy person he's crazy.

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff?

Seriously, I've just realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel too bad about it.

Sometimes if you have a difficult decision to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.

The eyes are the window to where the soul is supposed to be.

The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30.

When choosing sexual partners, remember: Talent is not sexually transmittable.

When people say, "You really, really must" do something, it means you don't really have to... When it's true, it doesn't need to be said.

You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at.

You can't be that kid standing at the top of the water slide, over- thinking it. You have to go down the chute.

Quotes of the day: Alan Kay

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:49:19 -0400

Alan Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist whose Dynabook, proposed in 1972, served as the conceptual prototype for the design and development of laptop and slate computers. He was the original architect of the overlapping-window user interface, and coined the phrase "object-oriented programming." (Click for Wikipedia article).

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

A successful technology creates problems that only it can solve.

Actually I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

I don't have an enormous desire to help children, but I have an enormous desire to create better adults.

I like to say that in the old days, if you reinvented the wheel, you would get your wrist slapped for not reading. But nowadays people are reinventing the flat tire.

If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough.

Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

Most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we're in- the one that we think is reality

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

PowerPoint is just simulated acetate overhead slides, and to me, that is a kind of a moral crime.

Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal- a sort of voting situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is

Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws.

The computer revolution hasn't started yet. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas.

The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

Future tense (or tense future)

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:42:01 -0400

As I've said many times, the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.
-William Gibson

Forget the past- the future will give you plenty to worry about.
-George Allen

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-Isaac Asimov

I am an optimist; anyone interested in the future has to be, otherwise he would simply shoot himself.
-Arthur C. Clarke

I believe the children are like our future: nasty, brutish and short. (From The Onion)
-Unattributed

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate.
-Arthur Wing Pinero

I have seen the future. It needs work.
-Robert Littell

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
-Albert Einstein

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
-E.B. White

I'm a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future, but only off to the side.
-Steven Wright

I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.
-James Baldwin

Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars... Could anything- anything- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous that the world we are living in.
-Sam Harris

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
-Eric Hoffer

In the future, more people will work for themselves, creating a huge market for bizarre products.
-Scott Adams

In the future, most democratic countries will be led by tall people with good hair.
-Scott Adams

In the future, the most important job skill will be a lack of ethics.
-Scott Adams

It's not the future that scares me... it's what will happen tomorrow.
-Frank Romano

My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer... and there are flying cars.
-Joss Whedon

Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.
-Arthur C. Clarke

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.
-Ashleigh Brilliant

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
-Dean Acheson

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-Alan Kay

The children are our future. And that is why, ultimately, we're screwed.
-Scott Adams

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
-Frank Herbert

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
-Erich Fromm

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-Winston Churchill

The enemies of the Future are always the very nicest people.
-Christopher Morley

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
-Warren Bennis

The future arrives too soon and in the wrong order.
-Alvin Toffler

The future depends on assumptions and assumptions are just stuff you make up. No sense in knocking yourself out.
-Scott Adams

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
-George F. Will

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make.
-James Cameron

The future is the past returning through another gate.
-Arnold H. Glasow

The future is unwritten. Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society, reflects our values and our faults, sometimes in terrifying exaggerations. It doesn't matter who you are today, if you don't show up in that mirror you are just not going to matter very much. Our kids have to show up in the mirror.
-Bruce Sterling

The future is usually just like the past- right up to the moment when it isn't.
-George F. Will

The future will be better tomorrow.
-Dan Quayle

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.
-John Sladek

The past can only be known, not changed. The future can only be changed, not known.
-Steward Brand

The past is gone; the present is confusing; and the future scares the hell out of me.
-David L. Stein

The trouble with our times is the future is not what it used to be.
-Paul Valery

The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future.
-James Thurber

There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
-Eugene O'Neill

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
-Arthur C. Clarke

When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.
-John M. Richardson, Jr.

When you think all is lost, the future remains.
-Robert Goddard

Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Way too much happiness

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:05:17 -0400

A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A husband and wife who have separate bedrooms have either drifted apart or found happiness.
-Honore de Balzac

A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
-Bette Davis

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
-Benjamin Disraeli

All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.
-Arthur C. Clarke

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.
-Bertrand Russell

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself.
-Don Marquis

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
-George Bernard Shaw

God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there.
-Rev. Billy Graham

Grief and sadness knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger than common joys.
-Alphonse de Lamartine

Grief is the obverse of happiness. They are two sides of a single coin, and only the vulnerable know either.
-Irving Townsend

Happiness and misery depend as much on temperament as on fortune.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Happiness equals reality minus expectations.
-Tom Magliozzi

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
-Ernest Hemingway

Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.
-(Bumper Sticker) Unattributed

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
-William S. Burroughs

Happiness is a form of courage.
-Holbrook Jackson

Happiness is a good feeling I get when things go a particular way; joy is an attitude I adopt in spite of how things go.
-Fil Anderson

Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
-Hermann Hesse

Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.
-Channing Pollock

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-Robertson Davies

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
-Marcel Proust

Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.
-Isaac Asimov

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-Ingrid Bergman

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family- in another city.
-George Burns

Happiness is that ridiculous life goal of illiterates.
-Elias Cannetti

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
-Don Marquis

Happiness isn't good enough for me. I demand euphoria!
-(From the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) Bill Watterson

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-Oscar Levant

Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.
-George Sand

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
-Robert Frost

Happiness, it is said, is seldom found by those who seek it, and never by those who seek it for themselves.
-F. Emerson Andrews

He that is happy, by whatever means, desires nothing but the continuance of happiness.
-Samuel Johnson

How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.
-Paul Sweeney

I believe that a man's pursuit of happiness should not be impeded by his employer's lack of imagination.
-Rob Neyer

I believe that inherent within the God-given right to the pursuit of happiness, is the equally God-given right to the pursuit of unhappiness. That is why I support gay marriage.
-Chuck Lorre

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.
-Aldous Huxley

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
-John Stuart Mill

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices do.
-C.S. Lewis

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
-Bertrand Russell

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad.
-C.S. Lewis

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
-Thomas Paine

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.
-Thomas Paine

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
-Agnes Repplier

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
-W. Somerset Maugham

It is poor government that does not realize that the prolonged life, health and happiness of its people are its greatest asset.
-William James Mayo

It's all there in the Declaration of Independence. We are the only nation in the world based on happiness.
-P.J. O'Rourke

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.
-Frank McKinney (Kin) Hubbard

Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.
-Mark CHernoff

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
-Robert A. Heinlein

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
-Helen Keller

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
-George Orwell

Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one.
-Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)

Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent. Not all the coal that is dug warms the world. It remains indifferent to the lives of those who risk their life and health down in the blackness of the earth; who crawl through dark, choking crevices with only a bit of lamp on their caps to light their silent way; whose backs are bent with toil, whose very bones ache, whose happiness is sleep, and whose peace is death.
-Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones)

Money can't buy you happiness, but it helps you look for it in a lot more places.
-Milton Berle

Money doesn't buy happiness, but with it at least you can be miserable in comfort.
-Unattributed

My recipe for marital happiness is whenever you can, read at meals.
-Cyril Connolly

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.
-Samuel Adams

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
-Mary Wollstonecraft

No one has a right to happiness.
-Eric Hoffer

Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.
-Virginia Woolf

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
-Guillaume Apollinaire

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
-William Feather

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
-Rita Mae Brown

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
-Terry Pratchett

People far prefer happiness to wisdom, but that is like wanting to be immortal without getting older.
-Sydney J. Harris

Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
-Oscar Wilde

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
-Hosea Ballou

Reason, Observation and Experience- the Holy Trinity of Science- have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us.
-Robert G. Ingersoll

Remember: Anyone who says money can't buy happiness simply hasn't learned where to shop.
-Warren Buffett

Science has promised us truth. It has never promised us either peace or happiness.
-Gustave Le Bon

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
-Oscar Wilde

Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.
-David Assael

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

That action is best which accomplishes the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.
-Francis Hutcheson

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
-Henry Ward Beecher

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
-Joseph Addison

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.
-H.L. Mencken

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
-Martha Washington

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
-Jeremy Bentham

The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.
-Ernest Dimnet

The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.
-Bertrand Russell

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race, have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.
-Thomas Paine

The one thing your friends will never forgive you is your happiness.
-Albert Camus

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
-William Cowper

The right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.
-Aldous Huxley

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
-Eric Hoffer

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do.
-James M. Barrie

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
-F.H. Bradley

The secret of happiness... is to be happy already.
-Julian Barnes

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible...
-Bertrand Russell

The secret to true happiness is a combination of low expectations and insensitivity.
-Olivia Goldsmith

The trouble is not that we are never happy- it is that happiness is so episodical.
-Ruth Benedict

There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.
-Helen Keller

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
-Unattributed

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
-Dante Alighieri

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
-Anthony Trollope

There is no such thing as happiness, only lesser shades of melancholy.
-Unattributed

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have a clear conscience, or none at all.
-Ogden Nash

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
-Buddha

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
-Gustave Flaubert

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
-Bertrand Russell

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.
-Erich Fromm

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
-George Bernard Shaw

We hold these truths to be self-evident- that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
-Thomas Jefferson

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?
-Jane Austen

You can't postpone sorrow, so why would you postpone happiness?
-Robert Brault

Quotes of the day: Francis Albert Sinatra

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:58:54 -0400

Baritone Frank Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was indisputably the 20th century's greatest singer of popular song. Though influenced by Bing Crosby's crooning, and by learning from trombonist Tommy Dorsey's breath control and blues singer Billie Holiday's rhythmic swing, Frank Sinatra mainstreamed the concept of singing colloquially, treating lyrics as personal statements and handling melodies with the ease of a jazz improviser. His best work is standards- Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and the Gershwins- but Sinatra, despite his 1957 denunciation of rock & roll as degenerate, recorded songs by the likes of Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, Jimmy Webb, and Billy Joel. Not only did his freely interpretive approach pave the way for the idiosyncrasies of rock singing, but with his character- a mix of tough-guy cool and romantic vulnerability- he became the first true pop idol, a superstar who through his music established a persona audiences found compelling and true. (Click for full article.)

-----

Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.

Being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation.

Cock your hat- angles are attitudes.

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world- to an individual or to a nation.

For years I've nursed a secret desire to spend the Fourth of July in a double hammock with a swingin' redheaded broad... but I could never find me a double hammock.

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.

How can a free people make decisions without facts? If the press reports world news as they report about me, we're in trouble.

Hunger is inexcusable in a world where grain rots in silos and butter turns rancid while being held for favorable commodity indices.

I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven, The Sermon on the Mount.

I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest.

If you possess something but you can't give it away, then you don't possess it... it possesses you.

I'm gonna live 'til I die.

I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life... I just go on from day to day, taking what comes.

I'm not unmindful of a man's seeming need for faith; I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle.

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

I've always had a theory that whenever guys and gals start swinging, they begin to lose interest in conquering the world.

People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it.

Put your sunglasses on, because you ain't going home 'til the morning comes.

Stop worrying about communism; just get rid of the conditions that nurture it.

What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest.

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.

You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad- if you're indifferent, endsville.

You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass.

(YouTube video: "Fly Me to the Moon")

Quotes of the day: Stephen Colbert

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:29:45 -0400

Stephen Tyrone Colbert (b. May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)

-----

Agnostics are just atheists without balls.

Any religion whose messiah's name isn't recognized by Microsoft Word can’t be that much of a threat.

Contraception leads to more babies being born out of wedlock, like fire extinguishers lead to more fires.

Contrary to what people may say, there’s no upper limit to stupidity.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self- imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

Equations are the devil's sentences.

I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit.

I can't prove it, but I can say it.

I love making observations. That one is a classic example.

I may be just an empty flesh terminal relying on technology for all my ideas, memories and relationships, but I am confident that all of that, everything that makes me a unique human being, is still out there, somewhere, safe in the theoretical storage space owned by giant multi-national corporations.

I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment.

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

If you repeat it, it's true. If you repeat it, it's true. Through repetition, something becomes true, if you repeat it enough until it becomes true. Do I need to repeat that for you?

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Reporting the facts can change the course of history. Then again, so can Wikipedia.

The fate of our country is now in the hands of people who don't think about what they want until they get right up to the register at McDonald's.

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you.

The more you know, the sadder you get.

The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate.

There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good.

There's nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.

You can't laugh and be afraid at the same time.

You cannot correct an old person every time they say something offensive. You would never make it through Thanksgiving dinner.

My faith in the 21st century is stored...

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:22:03 -0400

The first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield, is scheduled to return to earth this evening with U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.

Hadfield's been in orbit for 148 days, and during that time he's not only done whatever it this they do on the ISS, he's maintained constant contact with the people of this strange little blue ball via Twitter and other media. But he obviously saved the best for last.

(YouTube video: "A Space Oddity," from the ISS.

Godspeed, guys. May you have a safe and uneventful landing.

And eat your heart out, William Shatner.

But somebody has to do it...

Sun, 12 May 2013 06:20:54 -0400

Don’t get me wrong. Being a mom is no picnic. Raising the kids is the mother’s responsibility. It’s a thankless, solitary job, like sheriff or Pope.
-Stephen Colbert

Quotes of the day: Yogi Berra (and a lesson in etymology)

Sun, 12 May 2013 04:43:13 -0400

Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (born May 12, 1925) is a former American Major League Baseball catcher, outfielder, and manager. He played almost his entire 19-year baseball career (1946–1965) for the New York Yankees. Berra is one of only four players to be named the Most Valuable Player of the American League three times, and is one of seven managers to lead both American and National League teams to the World Series. As a player, coach, or manager, Berra appeared in 21 World Series. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

Berra is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history. He was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in a voting of fans in 1999. According to the win shares formula developed by sabermetrician Bill James, Berra is the greatest catcher of all time and the 52nd greatest non-pitching player in major-league history. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)

-----

For those who compile quotations, Yogi Berra is both a delight and a nightmare.

There's absolutely no doubt that Berra uttered every comment listed below. The problem is in determining whether the comments were original, or attributed remarks he later "adopted." As he confessed in The Yogi Book, "I really didn't say everything I said."

Consider one of Berra's most frequently repeated comments:

"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

That quote is variously attributed to Berra, Casey Stengel, Will Rogers, Mark Twain, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and many others. Software architect Larry Denenberg maintains a page on his website with links crediting the line to over two dozen sources.

Some of Berra's verbal contortions ("He's a big clog in their machine.") are called malapropisms, a word with an interesting- and eminently traceable- etymology.

It's directly derived from the word-mangling Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan's 1775 English comedy The Rivals, which in turn was based upon the word malapropos, an antonym of the far more commonly used apropos. (In French, "à propos" means, literally, "to the purpose." The prefix mal means "badly.")

Note the two words are not interchangeable. A malapropism is "the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar," while malapropos, when used as a noun, is "something inopportune or inappropriate."

Also note the majority of Berra's memorable comments aren't malapropisms, they're malaphors- a portmanteau of malapropism and metaphor coined by writer Lawrence Harrison,

But I digest. It was not my detention to rambulate.

-----

A home opener is always exciting, no matter if it's home or on the road.

A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.

All pitchers are liars or crybabies.

Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours.

Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.

Don't count on me. I'm playing way over my mind.

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.

He's a big clog in their machine.

I can't concentrate when I'm thinking.

I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early.

I knew the record would stand until it was broken.

I looked like this when I was young, and I still do.

I really didn't say everything I said... Then again, I might have said 'em, but you never know.

I usually take a two hour nap from one to four.

I'm a lucky guy and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.

I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.

If people don't want to come to the ballpark how are you going to stop them?

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer.

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.

If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

It ain't the heat, it's the humility.

It gets late early out there.

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

It's déjà vu all over again.

It's not too far. It just seems like it is.

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future

Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.

Little things are big.

Mantle can hit just as good right-handed as he can left-handed. He's just naturally amphibious.

Never answer an anonymous letter.

Ninety percent of putts that are short don't go in.

Ninety percent of this game is half-mental.

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

Pair up in threes.

Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting.

Swing at the strikes.

Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing.

The future ain't what it used to be.

The other teams could make trouble for us if they win.

The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.

There are few folks who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.

Think? How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?

We made too many wrong mistakes.

We were overwhelming underdogs.

What time is it? You mean now?

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.

You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn't enough, in the second half, you have to give what is left.

Observation of the day

Sat, 11 May 2013 03:01:57 -0400

The flight to Mars is six months; eight, if you leave from Newark.
-David Letterman

Quotes of the day: Mort Sahl

Sat, 11 May 2013 02:25:20 -0400

Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor best known for his stream of consciousness monologues centered on current events and politics. His low-key, droll delivery of withering, ascerbic observations prompted Time to refer to him as "Will Rogers with fangs." (Sahl has his own web site here.

-----

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.

A social historian is someone who reports accidents to eyewitnesses.

Did anyone ever wrestle with his conscience and lose?

God is watching us. If we support someone we don't believe in and say he's electable, then God will make sure he's not elected and hope we do better the next time.

Hitler said that he always knew you could buy the press. What he didn't know was that you could get them cheap.

"I Aim for the Stars, But Sometimes I Hit London." (suggested title of Werner von Braun's autobiography)

I don't think there's any reward beyond participating, beyond being here.

I made the mistake early in my career, when I moved to Hollywood, of being attracted to actresses. I used to go out exclusively with actresses and other female impersonators.

I'm not so much interested in politics as I am in overthrowing the government.

If anybody comes up to you and says, "My kid is a conservative- why is that?" you say, "Remember in the 60s when we told you if you kept using drugs your kids would be mutants?"

If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you will eventually be accused of treason.

If you were the last man on earth, I'd have to oppose you. That's my job.

In the forties, to get a girl you had to be a GI or a jock. In the fifties, to get a girl you had to be Jewish. In the sixties, to get a girl you had to be black. In the seventies, to get a girl you've got to be a girl.

I’m for capital punishment. You’ve got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.

Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not.

My whole life is a movie. It's just that there are no dissolves. I have to live every agonizing moment of it. My life needs editing.

People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.

Say what you will (about former Disney chairman Michael Eisner), he made the monorail run on time.

Television is never more false than when it's openly sincere.

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.

The bravest thing that men do is love women.

The Democrats don't want anyone to be born, but if you are, they will take care of you from the cradle to the grave. The Republicans don't mind if you are born, if you assure them that you don't plan to live long enough to collect your Social Security.

There's a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy.

There's a magazine of obscure poetry - called Whither.

This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.

Those who learn nothing from history are condemned to rewrite it.

Those who the gods would make rich and famous on TV, they first drive mad.

Two hundred years ago, we had Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, and there were four million people. Today we have 220 million, and look at our leaders. Darwin was wrong.

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.

We claim we believe in compassion, which is an abstract, and when it's personified we discredit the man.

We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.

When the Democrats form a firing squad, they stand in a circle.

More about mom

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:57:45 -0400

In the previous post, we searched the database for "mother" but we forgot about deal old Mom:

Every time I walk into a singles bar I can hear Mom's wise words: "Don't pick that up, you don't know where it's been."
-Unattributed

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
-P.J. O'Rourke

Four words every mom dreads hearing: "You're under arrest, Mom."
-John Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)

I thought of becoming born again, but mom refused.
-Unattributed

I wonder if a plastic surgeon's mom ever yells at him to stop making faces.
-Olivia Ramsey

My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, "Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim."
-Paula Poundstone

Never let Mom comb your hair when she's been arguing with Dad.
-Unattributed

Never play cards with a man named Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
-Nelson Algren

Nobody loves me but my mama, and she could be jivin' too.
-B.B. King

Yo mama is so fat, when she sings, it's over.
-Unattributed

Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.
-Unattributed

Whoever said "Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting" obviously never licked one.
-John Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)