“It has always seemed strange to me…The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
“Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law. “
- Henry David Thoreau
“If we can’t have revolution, we just might settle for revenge. ”
- George Oswall
“It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.”
“America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings.”
— Edward Abbey
“Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial. “
– Edward Abbey
“Like I told Warren, if he mentions Prop 13 one more time, he has to do 500 situps.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger - on balancing the state budget
“My friend James Cameron and I made three films together - True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger — (presenting at the 1998 Oscars®)
“My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger –in a 1990 interview with U.S. News
Just got back from a hike up Spencer’s Butte. The weather is cold, misty and fun so it’s a perfect day for a hike. Fewer people, less sweat. I started out listening to some tunes on my iPod, as usual, but quickly put the thing away so I could enjoy the sound of the rain around me. One of the cool things about the Butte is that it’s good for hiking when it’s really hot and good for hiking when it’s cold and rainy. The trees protect. Half way up I was happy to annoy the crap out of fellow hikers by answering a mobile call from my old climbing partner Bill. Hey, I haven’t heard from him for weeks and I do love to piss off other hikers. The farther they stay away from me, for whatever reason, the better. As far as I’m concerned they should be on the trails if I’m on the trails. That’s why I hike in the rain in the first place. I used to do the same thing by wearing hideously bright tights when climbing at the columns. Scared the hippies away; which was about 80% of the people who came out and climbed. I had friends who would bring a boombox with them out to Smith and play butt-rock (not hardcore, not punk, not rock; butt-rock) at top volume so that nobody would stand in line at the base of “their” climbs. Yeah, we’re a bunch of punks. But screw it right, people don’t have to go out into nature and have the same “earthy” experience. Whatever, I’m ranting, and for no good reason.
So here’s the deal. I’m going to Yosemite in a couple of weeks and I have to get out on the trails as much as possible between now in then. A roadtrip I was planning with Steve fell through due to a lack of funds and I had planned on using that as a training trip for Yosemite. I’m planning on carrying a lot of gear and on making my days last from sunrise to sunset. After I come back I’m going to buid a gallery of my photos so that you all can see some of my favorites. Right on, back to work for me.
“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.”
– Dan Quayle.
“You’ll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.”
– Robin Williams
“The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” -
–Mark Twain
At COMDEX Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr. Welch himself):
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
*
For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
*
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
*
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
*
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
*
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
*
The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.
*
New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
*
The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
*
Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lift the door handle, turn the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
*
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
*
Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as in the old car.
*
You’d press the “start” button to shut off the engine.
“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
– Douglas Adams
“A positive attitude will not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
– Herm Albright
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
– Mark Twain
“The most overlooked advantage of owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no law against whacking them around a bit.”
– Eric Porterfield
“UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.”
– Dennis Ritchie.
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
– Rich Cook
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
– Ernest Hemmingway
“I would never do crack… I would never do a drug named after a part of my own ass, okay?”
– Denis Leary
I think I’m going to start a section of food / restaurant reviews. It won’t be all that useful for those of you who don’t live right near me, or where I go when I travel, but I think it will be fun. I don’t cook a lot so I have way more experience with eating out than I really know what to do with. It’s time to do something with it. 
It will be good to let other people know about straight edge compatible restaurants. Eugene has a ton of vegan and vegetarian restaurants. Also, I think it’s about time I started doing reviews on punk and hardcore shows. Not so many come through Eugene, but I’ll do what I can. Coming soon…
Also gonna start using a spell checker before I add these entries to my site. So embarassing. So many mistakes.