But things just get so crazy,
living life gets hard to do.
And I would gladly hit the road
get up and go
if I knew
that someday
it would lead me back to you.
-Maroon 5, "Sunday Morning"

This song is how I've always felt.

"You may employ the services of Smokey under these circumstances:
A. Plane crashes on island and pilot may know how to signal for help.
B. Man pretending to be a priest refuses to admit sins.
C. Someone kills your fake daughter."
-Mama Scout, TWOP forum member

I'm so excited about LOST! This is a mock-instruction card on the specific rules enabling a person to awaken the non-sensical smoke monster. LOST's new season starts tonight!

Also, televisionwithoutpity.com, or twop.com is a brilliant website for anyone who loves TV shows and funny people. The forums there are my favorite forums on the internet, especially the people in the LOST threads. But it has every tv show imaginable, from Grey's Anatomy to Judge Judy. Brilliant.

"It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them." (p. 132)

"Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us." (p. 373)

"We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is." (p. 413)

... some East of Eden (Steinbeck) quotes.

I'll come back to all this later.

"When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, But what's my motivation?, I say, 'Your salary.'"
-Alfred Hitchcock

"An actor onstage can no more act upon the order 'Be happy' than she can upon the order 'Do not think of a hippopotamus.'"
-David Mamet

Studying theatre is kindof like studying bullshit. And let me tell you, I've become a master of bullshit. I particularly like the second quote because, 1) Mamet cracks me up, and 2) he gives the actor a feminine pronoun. He knows what's up.

I'm starting my last semester of college in about a week and a half, and majoring in Theatre is turning into a scarier and scarier idea. I can't believe that I've spent so much of my education on something so impractical. But it's what I'm good at. The way some people just click with numbers or learning foreign languages, I understand the elements of theatre better very naturally.

But now that I get the question, what are you doing to do with that degree?, more frequently than ever, I have taken to responding with -- WHATEVER I WANT. Which isn't necessarily true, but it seems to the get the point across.

"I decided to look around for something else to worship, something I could really count on. And immediately, I thought of the sun. Happened like that: overnight I became a sun-worshipper. Well, not overnight, you can't see the sun at night. But first thing the next morning. Several reasons: first of all, I can see the sun, okay? Yeah, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the sun. I'm big on that. If I can see something – I don't know, kind of helps the credibility along, you know? So every day I can see the sun, as it gives me everything I need: heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on the lake – an occasional skin cancer, but hey. At least there are no crucifixions, and we're not setting people on fire simply because they don't agree with us. Sun worship is fairly simple. There's no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don't have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And the best thing about the sun, it never tells me I'm unworthy. Doesn't tell me I'm a bad person who needs to be saved. Hasn't said an unkind word; treats me fine. So, I worship the sun. But I don't pray to the sun. Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite. … You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci."
-George Carlin (1999)

I just love this man. He just says it right and while I was so sad to see him go, he'd tell me to stop being such a big baby.

And,

"Reminds me of something my grandfather would say. He'd say, "I'm going upstairs to fuck your grandmother." He was an honest man, and he wasn't going to bullshit a four-year-old."
-George Carlin (1984)

because George Carlin don't bullshit nobody.

"Normally, there is your life, and you turn on the television and there is news, and no matter how grave it is, or how deep in the toilet the world has fallen, or how relevant the information might be to your own existence, your life remains a separate entity from that news. You still have to wash your underpants during a war, don't you? And don't you still have to fight with your loved ones and then apologize when you don't mean it even when there's a hole in the sky burning everything to a crisp? Of course you do. As a rule, there's no hole big enough to interrupt this interminable business of living, but there are exceptions, grim instances in the lives of a few select unlucky bastards when the news in the papers and the news in the bedrooms intersect. I tell you, it's a daunting and appalling moment when you have to read the newspaper to find out your own struggle."
-Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole (108)

I'm reading this book right now, a Booker Prize shortlister, and it's a really exceptional book all around, but this passage was particularly notable for me.

I mean, there are going to be news stories that stop our daily lives, if only momentarily. But those stop the lives of a large mass of people. We all know the big ones. Attacks of nature, of angry college kids. What about the news stories, though, that most of us skip right over?

I remember one time a couple of years back watching the local news to find out that a friend of mine from elementary school tried to kill a bunch of people at a party on Halloween. Attacked a bunch of his highschool friends with a knife. Straight out of Scream or something. And then I realized that all the creepy serial killers don't really go by their full names, because they plastered his full name all over the screen, so that nobody gets confused. But I had never even heard his middle name before. And I thought, firsthand, "but he was such a nice kid". And now he's in jail. And people don't talk about it anymore, but I think we all remember it. It can't be just me.

WTF, right?

"I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better."
-Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children" (1575)

In the "he said, she said" of modern living, I feel bombarded by people who can say it better than I can. In an attempt to catalog some of the quotes that inspire, amuse, confuse, or straightup horrify me, I'm recording them in this blog -- along with a word or two on why the quote hits home.

"The best ideas are common property."
-Seneca the Younger, "On Old Age", Moral Letters to Lucilius

I'm assuming/hoping that there are no legal issues here and plan on always crediting the quoted. If you think I have misquoted/miscredited, leave a comment.

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."
-George Santayana, Little Essays (1920) "Reason in Ethics"

I have high hopes that this blog becomes more than just a one-way expressionfest, which is why I encourage anyone who visits to throw in your two cents as well.