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August 30, 2005

Volume 5, Issue 30

Are quotes from other people inspiring?

Some would say so. Some would not.

Either way, that's the theme of today.

Click here to generate a list of random quotations, choose the third one, and write like a maniac, a maniac, on the floor, and she's dancing like she's never danced before (oh woh oh).

Oh, and include your quote at the bottom of your entry, but don't count it against your 100 words.

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Comments

Technology always was a double-edged sword, and the Orgasmotron was no exception.

That was the popular name for it. The geeks that created called it the Cerebrostimulator, and it swept the world.

A minor surgical procedure was all it took to implant the socket. The control unit was about the size of a Blackberry. You could stimulate every pleasure center in your brain with a touch of a button.

Hamburger. Pizza. Orgasm.

Aaaahhhhhhh.

76 countries banned it, even before people started dying.

700 consecutive orgasms, no food for a week. They died like flies, but with smiles on their faces.

[It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997]

Posted by: Elisson at August 30, 2005 7:09 AM · Permalink

QUOTE: In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras. Tom Nolan, in The Wall Street Journal

"Reconfigure the fictometer, Rupert!" Penelope hissed over the din of the dinner party. "Hurry, lest we be trapped inside Fitzgerald's dying American swingers-era universe forever!"

I spun the fictometer's dial. The green needle landed on HJ. "Henry James?"

"Too metaphorical, and the sentences are too long."

I spun again. "Chekhov?"

"Too tedious and Russian!"

"Vonnegut?"

"His style irritates me."

"Milton?"

"I'm an atheist!"

"Stendhal?"

"I never read him, too risky. Hurry!"

I blindly spun the fictometer and pressed the red button. As luck had it, we wound up in Steinbeck, which I suppose was the best of all possible outcomes.

Posted by: G-Do at August 30, 2005 7:29 AM · Permalink

Gaah - the quote was supposed to go at the bottom, wasn't it? Whoops.

Posted by: G-Do at August 30, 2005 7:32 AM · Permalink

To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.

Youth isn't always all it's touted to be.

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

(Thanks to [in order] Wilson Mizner, Lawana Blackwell, Edgar Bergen, Matt Groening, Rita Rudner, Leo J. Burke and George Santayana. And the quote that started it all - Life itself is a quotation. - Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine novelist & poet 1899 - 1986)

Posted by: hnumpah at August 30, 2005 11:10 AM · Permalink

The first brain emulation was created from a just-dead car accident victim in 2031. It turned out that the technology could reproducing the emotional side of a person, as well as deeply-engrained thought patterns, but completely eliminated creativity. Accordingly, the technology was applied, not to society's geniuses and artists, as originally envisioned, but to judges and politicians.

Sure, the dead can't vote (Chicago excepted). But they can be appointed, and they can run for office, and win. Voters seem happier voting for a predictable dead politican with well-known positions than a living one who might show 'growth' or 'new insight'.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
John Adams (1735 - 1826), Journal, 1772

Posted by: Jeff R. at August 30, 2005 12:46 PM · Permalink

Time enough at last. As I scrape another scrawny line on the rocky outcropping that has become my calendar I try to imagine the hectic days of my former life. There were the eight am meetings, the rush rush rush of every client's demand, there was the white band of skin under my digital watch checked hundreds of times a day. Then it seemed even lovemaking was religated to the best ovulation moment, no time for spontinaety. Where time it seemed my constant chase has now become the weight of sand apon my mind. Alone, desperate, detached, undeliverable, and insane.

"The days of the digital watch are numbered" Tom Stoppard

Posted by: Mike Rhodes at August 31, 2005 6:02 PM · Permalink