Anti-paranoia

 If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. 

...

Either They have put him here for a reason, or he’s just here. He isn’t sure that he wouldn’t, actually, rather have that reason…

 - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow 

Quote: Yano Kentaro - On dedication to the craft

KENTARO:  Furthermore, let me ask you... What will you do if you can't become a manga author?

HONOO:  I'll become an assistant for Mr. Ishimori, and help complete the unfinished Cyborg 009 Angels arc!

KENTARO:  Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, ha!

KENTARO:  Anyone who considers what will happen if they can't make it...

KENTARO:  Won't make it!

KENTARO:  Listen well. I am the president of CAS, Yano Kentaro... Age-wise, I'm 22 and should be a fourth-year...

KENTARO:  But I've really repeated 2 times in a row, and am still a freshman!

HONOO:  What!?

KENTARO:  Do you have that kind of resolve, my boy?

KENTARO:  For you see... if I can't become a manga author...

KENTARO:  I am completely doomed!

- Aoi Honoo - Episode 2

The Creation - James Weldon Johnson

 I remember a book my parents bought us when I was very young, probably right around 1980 of the creation, with lush photos of astronomical and geological processes to the very edge of each page.  And a few lines of the poem it contained stuck with me over the years, though I had no idea where it was from.

Recently occurred to me to try and track it down.  Turns out James Weldon Johnson wrote it.  And here it is:

AND God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
“I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.”

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands
Until He made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on His right hand,
And the moon was on His left;
The stars were clustered about His head,
And the earth was under His feet.
And God walked, and where He trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around His shoulder.

Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And He said, “Bring forth! Bring forth!”
And quicker than God could drop His hand.
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

Another Story

"Wake up," said the Ape. "I want to tell you another story. But first, give me a drink. I am exhausted."

 - The Arabian Nightmare, Robert Irwin

The Road of Kings

 I took a deep breath and stood up.  Turning to Boltar I said, "How do I find the Road of Kings?" He smiled at me and said, "You have just set your foot upon it."
   - The Road of Kings, John Boyle (Gloranthan Visions)

Spoon of Prosperity

Princess Bubblegum:  (deadpan)  Peeps will never starve in my eternal empire.

- Adventure Time, Red Starved

The food that's meant to suck

CXK:  (mouth full) Rasch umor shukenugets please.

Mom:  You want some more chicken nuggets?

CXK:  Yes.

Me:  Heh!  Sounded like he was asking for "Suckin' Nuggets".

Mom:  Suckin' Nuggets are getting to be pretty popular among foodies these days.

CXK:  Also can I have some of those suck things?

Avant Gardener

The paramedic thinks I'm clever cause I play guitar.
I think she's clever cause she stops people dyin'.

-  Courtney Barnett

Temporarily embarrassed

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
 - John Steinbeck

Punchy

Charles: When will my medicine punch? 

Adrienne:  You mean "kick in"? 

Charles:  Yah.

Mathematical!

Katherine:  I know 2+2 is 4, and 4+4 is 8, and 8+8 is 16.  But what's 16+16?

Adrienne:  32

Katherine:  But why!

Adrienne:  I don't know love.  Daddy says that numbers might be just concepts that we made up that may or may not accurately represent reality.

Katherine:  Okay. (promptly falls asleep)

Thanks Wookiefoot!

Dredged up by chance from the memory hole:

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking 

. . . 

Even if you don’t know what you want
buy something 

. . . 

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you 

- Rumi (filtered via ia Wookiefoot)

My only regret

Seems to me you're playing hard to get.
I played a cool kid once myself,
And it's my only regret.

- Help Stamp Out Loneliness, Record Shop

O'Shaughnessy's Cube

Based on careful observation of a large sample of the Purple Banshee clientele, O'Shaughnessy concluded that he could use three sets of two mutually exclusive attributes to create a universal classification system for the human content of any economic enterprise. 

Using the Herrick Exponential Rule of Sets, O'Shaughnessy found that for three sets of two mutually exclusive attributes the total number of combinations was 23. With this information he was able to construct the three- dimensional O'Shaughnessy Diagram of Economic Organization (O'Shaughnessy's Cube for short), as follows: 

Representing the total human content of the economic structure by a cube, O'Shaughnessy used his first pair of attributes to divide the structure into two parts - in front, NEAT; at the back, SLOPPY. 

The second pair of attributes divides the structure horizontally - the top LAZY; the lower BUSY. 

And the third pair divides vertically - BRIGHT to the right; STUPID to the left.

Serious psychonomics from David R. Boldt.

Mediator:  Could you describe his physique?
Grandfather:  Ordinary.
Grandfather:  I believe that he's fairly well-built,
Grandfather:  as all young men should be.
Grandfather:  Yes, in terms of legendary heroes, I would compare him to Hercules.
Grandfather:  In terms of gods, he's like Ares.
Grandfather:  Basically, he's built like your average person.
Mediator:  On what planet would that be considered average?
Grandfather:  Young men are meant to be buff.
Mediator:  (Grandpa must live in a world of bodybuilders.)

- Humanity Has Declined, Ep. 08

Mediator:  Oh, my watch is broken.
Grandfather:  You need a watch?
Grandfather:  (offers item) That should work.
Mediator:  Thank you very. . .
Mediator:  not much.
Mediator:  What is this?
Grandfather:  A wrist sundial.
Grandfather:  With a compass, you can accurately calculate the time.
Grandfather:  But it only works on sunny days.

- Humanity Has Declined, Ep. 07

The Sign of the Broken Sword

"Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible?" . . . "Of course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted—lust, tyranny, treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?" 

"In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord?"

- G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown

Ikiru

Kanji Watanabe: I can't afford to hate people. I don't have that kind of time.

Always true.

 

The Triumph of Primal Terror

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution knows this too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.

     - Alfonzo Smith

The Yozi Perspective

Nephilpal, on why the Yozi (Titan-like, Primordial beings) and their Akuma (evil Exalted) servants are completely incompatible with the well being and free will of every other entity in the Exalted RPG setting:

You spread a picnic down and the ants come. They do that, those ants. Not to worry, you can squash the ants. But ack! Something is wrong! They have spiders and the spiders are biting you and you are helpless and now they are wrapping you in a cocoon and the ants are crawling all over your picnic and eating it and you can't do anything about it. Damn the bugs! Damn them all! You wish you could squash them, but you can't. You hate them. You hate them all. The Exalted aren't heroes, they're just bugs with nasty venom. They all need squashing or taming into completely harmless pets... yes, train spiders to kill spiders. That will show them! 

. . . 

The akuma plan isn't really the akuma plan. It's the Yozi plan, which says "All of you are wrong. The setting is wrong. The universe is wrong. The war ended wrong. We made this. We should be in charge. Now, stop rebelling. Get off my damn picnic and give me back my Gameboy, you damn, dirty bugs!"