Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
“Some mathematicians say the lottery is the state’s tax on the mathematically slow.”
Dave Thomas, president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, commenting on likely changes to Powerball, which will make the chance of winning 146-million to one, up from 120.5-million to one.
“[G]iving me a blog was like giving a shotgun to a monkey.”
Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.
Larry: Depressives don’t. They want to be unhappy to confirm they’re depressed. If they were happy, they couldn’t be depressed anymore. They’d have to go out in the world to live, which can be depressing.
Dialogue from Closer
“[T]he best metaphor for the media was 6 year olds playing soccer. The ball pops up, and they all run towards it.”
Jon Stewart on The O’Franken Factor (quoted from Eschaton), first posted here a year ago today, but so apt recently.
“Moderate turbulence.”
The captain of the flight from Dulles to Houston last night. Moderate? Moderate? I hate it when the wings flap.
“Of course, the responsibility is not solely his, but the culture of executive exoneration has to end somewhere, and it’s not going to be in Washington, D.C.”
— Dan Neil in Los Angeles Times discussing the much needed head rolling at General Motors.
“In fact, I told my wife over the weekend, if I am ever incapacitated, I want her to pull the plug the minute Jesse Jackson shows up at my bedside.”
— Jay Leno on living wills.
“As we used to say back home in the Ozarks, that boy is so crooked that when he dies they gonna have to screw him into the ground.”
— Barbara O’Brien at The American Street talking about Tom DeLay
“I am the kind of person who would remain aloof and uncommunicative with the guy next to me on an airplane even if we were in the final moments of a vertical dive.”
Joel Achenbach, in a column on parenting
“Valet of the Dolls”
The name of an all-woman parking service in Los Angeles as reported in The New York Times
Mark A. R. Kleiman suggests that the Schiavo fiasco has resorted to “being played out under the rules of Calvinball.”
“Bernard J. Ebbers, founder of WorldCom, got to add felon to his already colorful curriculum vitae.”
New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson commenting on the events of the week.
“You can’t sell yourself as a genius to investors but then portray yourself as someone who flunked math to a jury.”
Stephen Meagher, former federal prosecutor, on Bernard J. Ebbers.
“Molly Ivins once wrote that she didn’t support gun control because she hated guns, but because she just liked to see knife fights.”
Ayn Coulter at The American Street
“Smaller, shorter and as gently cut as a brand-new baby boy …”
Opening line by Manohla Dargis in a review of the recut Passion of the Christ in The New York Times.
“For 50 bucks, you can buy yourself an armchair seat on a balcony ringing the room, from which you can peer down over the room. These, however, are always filled with older Italian men, the Unindicted Co-conspirator set, fat and inert in their little chairs, each one looking like a marshmallow stuffed into a shot glass.”
Benjamin Wallace-Wells in an article on women’s boxing, “Battered Women.”
“President Bush has just one question for the American voters: Is the rich person you’re working for better off now than they were 4 years ago?”
Jay Leno from one year ago last night, but it still fits.
“[B]ut it’s my guess that when Phil calls Tiger’s cell phone, the caller ID says ‘Whipping Boy.'”
“Pope’s condition improving. Bush foreign policy credited.”
“Women sometimes do not appreciate the way men try to get credit for actions that are viewed as routine for women. I will stipulate that most men cannot change a diaper without subsequently renting an airplane that trails a banner that says ‘I CHANGED A DIAPER.'”
“President Bush denying reports that he has plans to invade Iran. Oh, we’ll invade all right, we just don’t have any plans. Just like the Iraqi thing. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
Jay Leno
“Instead of trying to destroy AARP, Republicans should be signing up the seniors’ lobby to find Osama.
“AARP’s super-relentless intelligence network is certainly better than that doddering C.I.A’s. Osama has to have turned 50, and AARP somehow knows where everyone who has turned 50 lives.”
“But at bottom lurked a basic conflict about the future of the Ohio Country: Washington believed it was open to settlement; the British government believed it was closed; and the Indians believed it was theirs.”
Joseph J. Ellis in His Excellency: George Washington discussing the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River after 1763.
“For reasons best explained by Shakespeare and Freud, all children have considerable difficulty approaching their fathers with an open mind.”
Joseph J. Ellis in the Preface to His Excellency: George Washington
“I’m at the age where my main hobby is resenting the young.”
“Same thing with household fixtures, appliances, pipes and other things that break, or begin to leak, or show signs of being at the end of their days. You could spend a lot of money bringing in a pricey professional to fix them, and you could also try to fix them yourself. But sometimes you just have to do nothing, and hope that these things somehow manage to heal.”
Joel Achenbach echoing NewMexiKen’s philosophy exactly.