Zarf's Quote File

Everyone has to have a quotes file. If you don't have a quotes file, you at least have to link to the rumor file. Someday when we have Quote Transfer Protocol there will be no distinction.

If I had a quotes file, I'd sure put this in there. -- Zach Miller

If I ever find myself in the same quotes file as Miss Manners, I'm slitting my throat. -- Matthew E. Stanislawski

Because of the subtlety of differences within the same range of styles, it took more time to fathom other people than it does to read their philosophical bottom lines, so to speak, on their pants, buttons, caps or T-shirts. To probe candidates for friendship and other intimacies, one had to talk to them, which is unquestionably less efficient than it is to look around a room, decide, "They're all jerks," and go home and play computer games. -- Miss Manners

Tolfink carved these runes in this stone. -- Ursula K. Le Guin (It Was a Dark and Stormy Night)

"See that, its like what we call the whiteberry, but it's not the same. I never saw it until yesterday."

Presently he said, "There's no name for the animal I saw."

Luz nodded.

Between her and Sasha was silence, the bond of silence. He did not speak of the animal to others, nor did she. They knew nothing of this world, their world, only that they must walk in it in silence, until they had learned a language fitting to be spoken here. He was one who was willing to wait.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin (The Eye of the Heron)

The sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all
The sky was never blue
The stars are raindrops searching for a place to fall
And I never cared for you -- Willie Nelson

There's snow in the tropics
There's ice on the sun
It's hot in the Arctic
And crying is fun
And I'm happy now
And I'm glad we're through
And the sky is green
And the grass is blue -- Dolly Parton

Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me. -- Woody Guthrie

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do. -- Woody Guthrie

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girt.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay (Conscientious Objector (1931))

The nature of my soul is to love all my friends, relatives, and people I admire. So, I could walk up to, o let's say someone I never met before, yet knew of, and admired, and in all sincerity say "I Love You!" -- Terri Hicks (The Commie, 5/6/1992, Babbel Book 6.0)

Imagine if you will...The Perfect World. A world where we all live in peace together...No money...we all work together to make society work. A society of friends, of comrades, of lovers, and of world wide harmony. No poverty, no greed, no deprecation. This is the perfect world...Many have agreed with me. Karl Marx for one. Think about it... -- Terri Hicks (Tenacious Hydracious otherwise known as Commie, 4/10/1992, Babbel Book 6.0)

Zach is on strike against the left. -- Paul Kotheimer

When we describe the present we describe the future of a past that couldn't predict it. -- Unknown UC-IMC Newshour Reporter (speaking about Sustainable Development)

Truth is ammunition. Knowledge is power. Love is political. Every hour we are wasting is critical. -- Pamela Means

A career? I've thought about this quite a bit sir and I would have to say considering what's waiting out there for me, I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I dont want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career. I dont want to do that. My father's in the army. He wants me to join, but I can't work for that corporation, so what I've been doing lately is kick-boxing, which is a new sport...as far as career longevity, I dont really know. I cant figure it all out tonight, sir, so I'm just gonna hang with your daughter. -- Lloyd Dobbler (Say Anything)

When the richest 360 people on the planet own the same amount of wealth as the poorest two billion, something has gone wrong. And, when you think about it, if all the two billion got together and smiled at the 360, that would look pretty spooky. -- Mark Steel

Ya Basta! -- EZLN's Declaration of War

Sometimes you get so caught up in what you're struggling against, you forget what you're standing for. And what you're standing for is love and respect for all life. -- Julia Butterfly Hill

Don't hate the media, become the media! -- Jello Biafra

I'm worried now...but I won't be worried long. -- Woody Guthrie

I've got money in the bank. I've got a car to drive in. I've got a love that won't quit. I've got a clear and able mind. Everything I need is right here in my hands. -- Melissa Ferrick

Jump off a cliff, and build your wings on the way down. -- Ray Bradbury

If a musician doesn't reach personal and unexpected emotional realms with his music - what the fuck is he doing? -- Nigel Kennedy

The Swampy Cree have a conceptual term which I've heard used to describe the the thinking of a porcupine as he backs into a rock crevice:

Usà puyew usu wapiw.

"He goes backward, looks forward." The porcupine consciously goes backward in order to speculate safely on the future, allowing him to look out at an enemy or the new day. To the Cree, it's an instructive act of self-preservation.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin (quoting Howard A. Norman in "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be")

This is not about getting back to nature. It is about understanding we've never left.

We are deep in our nature every day. We're up to our ears in it. It's under our feet, it is in our lungs, it runs through our veins. We are not visitors here. We weren't set down to enjoy the view. We were born here and we're part of it - like any ant, fish, rock, or blade of grass.

This connection is as personal as it is fundamental. It can't be proved with theorems and diagrams. You either feel it or you don't.

Sierra Club members feel it.

Maybe it came to you on a mountain trail, or on a riverbank, or at a windowsill watching a spider's unthinking intelligence unfold. Simply put, it's the sudden conviction that there is something out there, something wonderful. And it is much, much bigger than you.

A revelation like this could easily overwhelm a person. We choose to let it inspire us. Nature, vastly complex and infinitely subtle, is our perfect metaphor. Related to everything, signifying everything, it is the spring where we go to renew our spirit. And it, in turn, asks something of us.

It compels us to take responsibility for our action.

Look, there is nothing inevitable about the future of our environment. A poisoned stream can get worse, stay the same, or get better. It depends largely on what we choose to do. That simple belief, backed by 100 years of effort and result, is what drives t he Sierra Club.

So, forget the grim cliche of the selfless environmentalist. When you accept your connection to nature, suddenly you can't look at the world without seeing something very personal in it. You are part of it, and you work for the planet because it gives you joy to do so.

You work for the planet because you belong to it.
-- Sierra Club

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. -- Albert Einstein

Take it easy but take it. -- Woody Guthrie

As soon as you're born they make you feel small. By giving you no time instead of it all. -- John Lennon

I haven't read Marx's Capital but I've got the marks of capital all over my body. -- Big Bill Haywood

I ain't necessarily a communist. But I've been in the red all my life. -- Woody Guthrie

Refrigerator

I got a set of UNIX related refrigerator magnets at the Perl Conference 2.0 from the USENIX folks. Combined with some regular refrigerator poetry, here's what my housemates and I have come up with. I will leave these unattributed to preserve the anonymity of the refrigerator.

repulsively produced HTML
under a shadowy kernel
is always fast

stop newbie
RTFM

yacc will beat awk at parsing

archived@USENIX

whereis my apparatus he stormed

Internet wizards
hack weak hierarchy
write code together

finger me you geek

I lust for men and not telnet

two lazy rusty shadows
of an essential iron firewall protocol

login to TTY
after xterms fall

scream flame through sendmail

IMHO
She is chanting no-op
to a virtual void

elaborate superuser authentication

one sad symphony of snail-mail gifts

my enormous guru tools heave a delicate core dump

the links are gone the pictures away a bitter WWW moment

her gorgeous smiley
has crushed my shell

please kill sausage wannabees
though chocolate boinked the languid sockets

nuke luccious networking

why spam a goddess

the sleeping black hole whispers of death

an aliased ping flood at privacys gateway

man with mask
blue sky and moon
misty spring rain
frantic girl

my who and the 
authentication crush
always worship whispers

languid & repulsive
a gorgeous protocol
a bitter & drunk client

rusty hierarchy
produces a delicate superuser

my kernel code
powers up like
never still water

music
smooth
leave
it 
near
girls
sea

delirious
snail-mail
for 
frantic
forest 
vacation

lazy me
sleeping here
by smiley light
chants an elaborate
networking symphony
in privacy beneath
the shadowy garden

screaming core dump

                             boink
is dreams urge cat tongue to       the enormous skin pole
                             blow

GUI could rip pink flame with a USENIX firewall