Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.
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The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.
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In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.
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When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark; 'Good luck Mr. Gorsky.'
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Mr. Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the Good luck Mr. Gorsky statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
Just last year, (on 5 July 1995 in Tampa Bay, FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hits a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbors bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. And Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. 'Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!'
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Alot of people ask me stupid fucking questions.
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It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.
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Geng Lei was a famous archer of the state of Wei. One day while he was on an excursion outside the city with the King of Wei, he saw a bird circling in the sky. The King asked him to down the goose with an arrow. He answered: I don't have to use an arrow. I can just make the bird fall down from the sky with my arch. Do you have that marvellous skill? asked the King. Presently they saw the wild goose flying from the east. Geng Ying twanged the string of his bow and indeed the wild goose at once dropped to the ground in front of them. You're really a wonderful archer, said the King with approval. Geng Lei said, This is a wounded wild goose. From its desolate cry and tired flight you can see its wound has not yet healed. When it heard the twang of my bow-string, it thought it was again hit by an arrow and fell from the sky.
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Janissaries are famous for their cooking. Perhaps you'd like a taste?
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In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes
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There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause.
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In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
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In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong? she asked. I mean, what if -- uh -- when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say? Russell was delighted with the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'
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I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women: I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair....
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A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas-a place where history comes to life.
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In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. 'What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong' she asked. 'I mean, what if--uh--when the time comes, you should meet Him What will you say' Russell was delighted with the question. His birght, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contempalated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, 'Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.' '
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BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion. There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being preserved on a floating lotus leaf.Ere babes were invented The girls were contended. Now man is tormented Until to buy babes he has squandered His money. And so I have pondered This thing, and thought may be'T were better that Baby The First had been eagled or condored. --Ro Amil
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Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.... Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year
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Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.
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A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas a place where history comes to life.
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I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
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Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers and are famous preservers of youthful looks.
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I studied the lives of great men and famous women; and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
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Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
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Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, caf?s full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.
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A group touring Westminster Abbey in London heard the guide list the famous people buried within its walls. During a momentary silence a little old lady's voice blurted out loud and clear, Anybody been saved here lately?
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Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. (Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.)
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Once you become famous, there is nothing left to become but infamous.
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In Life: You spill your cereal at breakfast, you get fired from your job, your dog dies, and your house burns down. Computer Equivalent: Virus Detected.
In Life: You've finished a 900 page novel. Your life's work. You will be a famous author world-wide; but then, it falls into the lit fireplace. Computer Equivalent: Quitting without saving.
In Life: A solution to all problems is found. World peace is achieved, all conflicts end, and everyone is happy. Computer Equivalent: Ctrl+Alt+Del
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The Scripture vouches Solomon for the wisest of men; and his proverbs prove him so, The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame each of them by a single sentence, consisting of two or three words.
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Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous -- who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?
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