baldwin

"... Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it the brilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the the city that glowed before him.
But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers would be strewn and before whom multitudes cried, Hosanna! He would be, of all, the mightiest, the most beloved, the Lord's anointed; and he would live in this shining city which his ancestors had seen with longing from far away. For it was his; the inhabitants of the city had told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying, and they would take him to their hearts and show him wonders his eyes had never seen."
--Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin

pod envy

Word of the day: iSnob
"An iSnob is someone who walks the halls carrying their iPod, like they are above the rest of us."
--coworker (apparently I am the first iSnob)

always in flux

"People, he had said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren't any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly line on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated by his heritage and his environment, but he was subject to every sort of variation within the narrow limits of his capabilities."
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"It was not permanence alone that made what the Anglo Saxons called home, he thought. It was continuity, the flux of fashion and decoration moving in and out again as minds and purses altered, but always within the framework of the established and recognizable outline. Even if the thing itself was paltry and dull, the history of the thing was not."
--The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner

he flunks

"In the wake of successful Iraqi elections, President Bush's job approval rating has jumped up to 57%, or, as high school teachers call it, an "F."
--Tina Fey, SNL

untitled

"I'm beginning to believe all engineers are liars."
--coworker

random acts of creativity

Participant quotes from a creative writing workshop:
"I have intimacy issues with my characters."
"When do bat girls bloom?"
"OK, here's the woo woo part."

why read

"Someone who is engrossed in literature has learned that every individual has different dimensions to his personality. ... Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them ... If we had learned this one lesson our society would have been in much better shape today."
--Iranian student in Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

groundhog bush

"Today is Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address.

It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a hideous little creature of marginal intelligence for prognostication.

The other involves a groundhog."
--anonymous