"You know I run a small academy for lobsters like this one. We stress tough love, daily chores and the like."

"No! We’re not sending the lobster away to some snobby boarding school."

"Yarr, I understand. It’s hard to let go. Tell me this then, do you have any spare change?"

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones...

...It referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April...

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another...

...For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all.

Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."

I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

When you say, "I am a person," the word person is from the drama. When you open a play script and see the list of the actors, this is the dramatis personae, the persons of the drama. The word person in Latin is per-sona, meaning "through sound," or something through which sound comes; the persona in Greek or Roman drama was the mask worn by the actors. and because they acted on an open-air stage, the mask's mouth was shaped like a small megaphone that would project the sound. So the person is the mask. Isn't it funny how we have forgotten that?

...But if you forget that you are the actor, and think you are the person, you have been taken in by your own role.

I am putting makeup on empty space 
all patinas convening on empty space 
rouge blushing on empty space 
I am putting makeup on empty space 
pasting eyelashes on empty space 
painting the eyebrows of empty space 
piling creams on empty space 
painting the phenomenal world 
I am hanging ornaments on empty space 
gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins on empty space 
I am sticking wire pins into empty space 
I pour words over empty space, enthrall the empty space 
packing, stuffing jamming empty space 
spinning necklaces around empty space 
Fancy this, imagine this: painting the phenomenal world 
bangles on wrists 
pendants hung on empty space 
I am putting my memory into empty space 
undressing you 
hanging the wrinkled clothes on a nail 
hanging the green coat on a nail 
dancing in the evening it ended with dancing in the evening 
I am still thinking about putting makeup on empty space 
I want to scare you: the hanging night, the drifting night, 
the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I want to scare you 
you 
I bind as far as cold day goes 
I bind the power of 20 husky men 
I bind the seductive colorful women, all of them 
I bind the massive rock 
I bind the hanging night, the drifting night, the 
moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep 
I am binding my debts, I magnetize the phone bill 
bind the root of my pointed tongue 
I cup my hands in water, splash water on empty space 
water drunk by empty space 
Look what thoughts will do   Look what words will do 
from nothing to the face 
from nothing to the root of the tongue 
from nothing to speaking of empty space 
I bind the ash tree 
I bind the yew 
I bind the willow 
I bind uranium 
I bind the uneconomical unrenewable energy of uranium 
dash uranium to empty space 
I bind the color red I seduce the color red to empty space 
I put the sunset in empty space 
I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering to empty space 
renewable blue 
I take the green of everything coming to life, it grows & 
climbs into empty space 
I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space 
I clasp the yellow of the cat's eyes sitting in the 
black space I clasp them to my heart, empty space 
I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space 
Take the floor apart to find the brown, 
bind it up again under spell of empty space 
I want to take this old wall apart I am rich in my mind thinking 
of this, I am thinking of putting makeup on empty space 
Everything crumbles around empty space 
the thin dry weed crumbles, the milkweed is blown into empty space 
I bind the stars reflected in your eye 
from nothing to these typing fingers 
from nothing to the legs of the elk 
from nothing to the neck of the deer 
from nothing to porcelain teeth 
from nothing to the fine stand of pine in the forest 
I kept it going when I put the water on 
when I let the water run 
sweeping together in empty space 
There is a better way to say empty space 
Turn yourself inside out and you might disappear 
you have a new definition in empty space 
What I like about impermanence is the clash 
of my big body with empty space 
I am putting the floor back together again 
I am rebuilding the wall 
I am slapping mortar on bricks 
I am fastening the machine together with delicate wire 
There is no eternal thread, maybe there is thread of pure gold 
I am starting to sing inside about the empty space 
there is some new detail every time 
I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall: 
moonless black night beyond country-plaid curtains 
everything illuminated out of empty space 
I hang the black linen dress on my body 
the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night 
daughter of troubled sleep 
This occurs to me 
I hang up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to me out in the 
night in my skull of empty space 
I go outside in starry ice 
I build up the house again in memory of empty space 
This occurs to me about empty space 
that it is nevered to be mentioned again 
Fancy this 
imagine this 
painting the phenomenal world 
there's talk of dressing the body with strange adornments 
to remind you of a vow to empty space 
there's talk of the discourse in your mind like a silkworm 
I wish to venture into a not-chiseled place 
I pour sand on the ground 
Objects and vehicles emerge from the fog 
the canyon is dangerous tonight 
suddenly there are warning lights 
The patrol is helpful in the manner of guiding 
there is talk of slowing down 
there is talk of a feminine deity 
I bind her with a briar 
I bind with the tooth of a tiger 
I bind with my quartz crystal 
I magnetize the worlds 
I cover myself with jewels 
I drink amrita 
there is some new detail 
there is a spangle on her shoe 
there is a stud on her boot 
the tires are studded for the difficult climb 
I put my hands to my face 
I am putting makeup on empty space 
I wanted to scare you with the night that scared me 
the drifting night, the moaning night 
Someone was always intruding to make you forget empty space 
you put it all on 
you paint your nails 
you put on scarves 
all the time adorning empty space 
Whatever-your-name-is I tell you “empty space” 
with your fictions with dancing come around to it 
with your funny way of singing come around to it 
with your smiling come to it 
with your enormous retinue & accumulation come around to it 
with your extras come round to it 
with your good fortune, with your lazy fortune come round to it 
when you look most like a bird, that is the time to come around to it 
when you are cheating, come to it 
when you are in your anguished head 
when you are not sensible 
when you are insisting on the 
praise from many tongues 
It begins with the root of the tongue 
it begins with the root of the heart 
there is a spinal cord of wind 
singing & moaning in empty space 

i didn't know where to cut this one for just an excerpt. it's all one mass, snowballing into the next.

...For “All I Need,” Mr. Greenwood said, he wanted to recapture the white noise generated by a band playing loudly in a room, when “all this chaos kicks up.”

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

According to the story, Morgenbesser was in a New York diner ordering dessert. The waitress told him he had two choices, apple pie and blueberry pie. "Apple," Morgenbesser said.

A few minutes later the waitress came back and hold him, oh yes, they also have cherry pie.

"In that case," said Morgenbesser, "I'll have the blueberry."

Cherry pie is what Arrow calls an "irrelevant alternative." It is irrelevant because, given the chance to order cherry pie, Morgenbesser rejected it. But something you don't want anyways shouldn't cause you to change what you do want.

...

The Great Flip-Flop is an example of a vote failing to meet independence of irrelevant alternatives.

Doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman's hands are clean.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man learned in seven years.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

...

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

The main job of theoretical physics is to prove yourself wrong as soon as possible.

He who knows one, knows none.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that’ll do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.

“Tommy,” Willie said. “I love you, you son of a bitch, and don’t die.”

Thomas Hudson looked at him without moving his head.

“Try to understand if it isn’t too hard.”

Thomas Hudson looked at him. He felt far away now and there were no problems at all. He felt the ship gathering her speed and the lovely throb of her engines against his shoulder blades which rested against the boards. He looked up and there was the sky that he had always loved and he looked across the great lagoon that he was quite sure, now, he would never paint and he eased his position a little to lessen the pain. The engines were around three thousand now, he thought, and they came through the deck and into him.

“I think I understand, Willie,” he said.

“Oh shit,” Willie said. “You never understand anybody that loves you.”

...

'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die: 
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.' 

'Home,' he mocked gently. 

'Yes, what else but home? 
It all depends on what you mean by home. 
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more 
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, 
They have to take you in.'

'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.'

...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Half awake and sleeping on my feet

wrapped up in life. be back shortly.

"Now statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday. Ahhh, but there are 364 unbirthdays!"

"Why, then today is my unbirthday too!"

"It is? In that case… a very merry unbirthday!"

on this international women's day, here's a photo of a formidable women from my family: Eduwiges de Villers (my great grandma). who, along with my great grandfather, governed the beautiful state of chiapas in southern mexico in the 1930s.

here she is chilling.

You never had a camera in my head!

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

"The eagle."

"The turkey."

"The eagle. The eagle is a majestic bird!"

"The eagle is a scavenger, a thief and coward. A symbol of over ten centuries of European mischief."

"And the turkey?"

"The turkey is a truly noble bird. Native american, a source of sustenance to our original settlers, and an incredibly brave fellow who wouldn't flinch from attacking a whole regiment of Englishmen single-handedly! Therefore, the national bird of America is going to be..."

"The eagle!"

Benjamin Franklin and John Adams discuss a new nation's national bird, "1776" (1972)