Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.”
John Dickerson – Slate Magazine
Dickerson’s article is about list-making. He notes: “Digging through the boxes in my garage, cursing the disorganization, I came across an old planner from 1995. ‘Clean garage,’ it said on June 6.”
“Are you aware that if you take out gun accidents and auto accidents, that the United States actually is better than those other countries?”
Senator John Ensign as reported by TPM LiveWire. Ensign was comparing health care for us accident-prone Americans as opposed to France, Germany, Japan and Canada.
“[I]t’s all a lot of fun until somebody cries.”
Adam Gopnik, quoting an anonymous mother, in a review of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol
“It’s one thing to play badly, but quite another to turn the ball over nine times in three games. If you asked him to hold your coat, the free safety on the other team might be wearing it five minutes later.”
Girl: Do you remember what you promised me before you left?
Guy: What? No.
Girl: You don’t remember what you promised me?
Guy: I promise you things all the time. I never remember any of them.
— Coffee house, East Village
First posted here three years ago today.
“One reason why this whole torture thing bothers me
… is that I’ve already told my dentist everything I know and it didn’t make him stop.”
NewMexiKen
First posted here three years ago today.
“I don’t need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”
And of course, if Senator Kyl has federal employee health insurance, as most congress persons do, he has maternity coverage.
Why would any woman in Arizona ever vote for that man?
TPM has the video (link above).
“So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents?
“If so, you’ll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change.”
“I used to work with a couple of Notre Dame graduates who took turns throwing parties for football games. I haven’t got a lot of use for Notre Dame, myself, but I’d even put up with soccer for a crack at the kinds of wine they stocked.”
Louisville Juice on wine and football.
“A few of the less-discussed downsides to Jerry Jones’s new palace: Parking costs $40, a 20-inch pizza really costs $60, and the tax burden placed on the community by construction overruns is a whopping $933 million.”
Should you be unaware, the reference is to the new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys.
“The simple fact is that every time Krauss opens her mouth to sing, angels stop what they’re doing and take notes.”
— Rick Anderson in a review of Alison Krauss at All Music. He adds:
“There may be no musical pleasure quite as pure and sweet as listening to Krauss sing ‘Baby, Now That I’ve Found You’ or ‘When You Say Nothing at All.’ And when she starts in on the impossibly beautiful gospel tune ‘Down to the River to Pray,’ the effect is almost disturbingly moving.”
First posted in 2006.
“The one variable that overwhelmingly predicted the presence of the germ was the presence of a cat. Cat owners were eight times more likely than others to have MRSA at home.”
“Nothing like waking up in the morning and finding out a whole sector of the economy is completely screwed. Are these good times or what?”
Matt Taibbi reporting that the Kansas supreme court has ruled mortgages (at least in Kansas) cannot be foreclosed because the company tracking mortgage paperwork is so screwed up it borders on fraud.
The company tracks 60 million mortgages nationwide. Sixty. Million.
Or as Ellen Brown puts it in her report on the case (that Taibbi links), “The pirates seem to have captured the ship, and until now there has been no one to stop them.”
“I grew up in a family of seven in a one-bathroom house, a ratio of humans to toilets that more than one of us kids used in college-application essays as proof of our ability to problem-solve.”
Emma Brown at High Country News beginning an article on “Books for lonely times.” An interesting list.
“It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens—the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born To Run—whoops, I meant to leave that one out.”
“It’s hard to believe now, but Bruce Springsteen almost didn’t reach stardom.”
At Slate Magazine, Louis P. Masur tells the fascinating history of The birth of Born To Run.
Lifehacker has an item on How To: Beat the Procrastination Habit, but I decided I’d read it later.
NewMexiKen
First posted here two years ago. I still haven’t read it.
“When will collapsed U.S. real estate prices regain their prior peaks? Moody’s has out a bleakly amusing new figure showing that California (and Arizona and Florida) is looking at the early 2030s.”
“Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized and run by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and it is all organized and run by the Italians.”
“Birther queen Orly Taitz tells TPM that the federal judge who threatened her with sanctions is a ‘puppet’ of the Obama regime and should be tried for treason, but that, like Nelson Mandela, she will fight on to prove Obama is illegitimate.”
She keeps on and that puppet judge is going to put her contemptful birther ass in jail.
“If Beaver and Wally were around today, they’d likely be writing snarky, revealing blogs about June and Ward.”
And, no doubt that Eddie Haskell would.
“It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.”
… essayist and editor, was born on September 12th in 1880. I’ve posted many of these before, but Mencken has some great lines that I never tire of reading:
“Rep. Joe Wilson’s 2010 opponent has received more than $100,000 in contributions overnight.”
Reported by TPM.
Wilson is the a-hole congressperson who shouted “You lie” at the President of the United States last night. Oh, and BTW, the President was correct and Wilson was wrong as well as rude.