Friday Favorite Quotations

I’m apparently not a freak of nature for loving quotations so much. There’s a plethora of websites and many hefty tomes devoted to nothing but the snappy sentences of other people. Which is good, because I need an assload o’ quotes.

You see, I’m a quote junkie. Always have been. It’s part of my writing. I’ll spend the entire damned night looking for the right quote for a story or chapter. I’ve outlined stories using nothing but quotes from songs. A good part of my reading involves marking off things that will make pithy quotes later on.

Quotes are there when I need them. There’s been many a day when a quote rescued me from becoming a sad pile of human wreckage hiding under the covers. They’ve been there to lend zip and zing to a whimsical day. They’ve been there to show me a new direction. And they’ve been there to say exactly what I want to say without having to take the blame.

Allow me to share with you some of my absolute favorites.

Profound and Perilous

There are some quotes that work like a punch to the gut. They may not be comfortable or comforting, but they do make you think.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore
-Golda Meir

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives
-Albert Einstein

The very bones of those you talk about have turned to dust. All that remains of them is their words.
-Lao Tzu

You see this strong wall? Although it understands nothing, it too will disintegrate, it too will split. Disintegration has a logic of its own.
-Berl Katznelson

It is precisely because one act can balance ten thousand kind ones that we call it “evil.”
-Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

I found myself looking at the photos of combat, of wounded civillians, of people whose worlds had crumbled and fallen, without any sense of irony. These people were us. Whatever side they were on. They were us, and the images had a truth and an immediacy I couldn’t have imagined until recently.
-Neil Gaiman, after viewing an exhibition of Robert Capa’s war photographs after 9-11

A Stiff Shot of Encouragement

We could use some after the above, couldn’t we?

Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier;
I have seen worse sights than this.
-Homer, The Iliad

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.
-Elie Wiesel

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
-Japanese Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

Heroism, the Caucasion moutaineers say, is endurance for one moment more.
-George Keenan

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.
-Thomas Paine

Sheer Beauty

There are some quotes that fill the mouth like wine, like honey, like life. They beg to be savored.

At poor peace I sing
to you strangers (though song
is a burning and crested act…)
-Dylan Thomas, Author’s Prologue

We do not regard what is before our feet; we all gaze at the stars.
-Quinas Ennius

It isn’t “To be or not to be,”
Or “Cogito ergo sum” either;
The real business is to understand the inevitable:
The avalanche that cannot be stopped,
The stream that flows forever.
-Ahmed Arif

Thus should you think of all this fleeting world;
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud
A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.
-Diamond Sutra

Why don’t you come
And help create the universe.
I can’t do this all by myself.
-Nida Fazali

It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
-Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Wit and Whimsy

A sense of humor being essential to the full enjoyment of life, I think we should end this not with a bang, but a fullisade of whoopie cushions.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
-E.B. White

It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
-Muhammed Ali

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
-Xenophon

…No scientist on Earth knows how a planet might blow itself up, which is probably just as well.
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one. One good one.
-Archilochus, Iambi et Elgi Graeci

Wonderful theory. Wrong species.
-E.O. Wilson (verdict on Marxism)

Under controlled experimental conditions of temperature, time, lighting, feeding, and training, the organism will behave as it damn well pleases.
-The Harvard Law of Animal Behavior

The heavens above do not equal one half of me…. In my glory, I have passed beyond the sky and the great earth… I will pick up the earth, and put it here or put it there….
Have I been drinking soma?

-Rig Veda

Your turn, my darlings. What are the words that lodge in your head and refuse to be budged?

Friday Favorite Quotations
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Friday Favorite Music

This Friday Favorite is going to be agonizing. I don’t just love music – I adore music. Lots of music. A billion dollars wouldn’t be enough to purchase all of the music I desperately want. Ten years wouldn’t be enough time to talk about it. Those “Desert Island Albums” questions, where you’re reduced to picking 5 albums to get stranded with, leave me sweating. Strand me on a desert island with a 1 terraflop iPod, damn it!

But we’re going to try to reduce a great love down to nine: three categories, three artists. And I’m going to weep over all those I have to leave behind.

1. Black Metal

When Chaos Lee and I lived together, he’d play his black metal albums in the living room. I’d catch snatches of growls, insanely fast drum work, and just the most brutal cacophany of sound I’d ever heard.

“How the fuck can you listen to that noise?” I asked the first time. Chaos smiled.

The next time, I paused by his computer with head cocked. “Actually… there’s sort of a rhythm there. They’re actually growling on key.” Chaos smiled.

The third time, I appeared beside his computer salivating, pen and paper in hand. “What’s the band’s name? Emperor. Thanks. And the album? Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. Excellent. I. Must. Have. It.” Chaos laughed. He’d known all along I’d fall, and fall hard.

Black metal is, to me, the modern-day equivalent of Beethoven. It’s melodic, complex, atmospheric, and utterly beautiful. The lyrics read like poetry – dark, immense poetry. And the corpse paint makes the concerts more interesting.

Emperor, of course, is one of the greatest black metal bands of all time. Anthems is one of the easiest albums to suck people in with, because it starts off with such a gentle little instrumental melody, getting darker, darker, and then wham – full on black metal mayhem, with interludes of instrumentals that put many classical composers to shame.

Dismal Euphony is just tremendous fun, and gorgeous. I’d started with their song “Carven” on a compilation, which gave me the impression they were typical dark, black metal. Then I heard “Days of Sodom.” The chorus sounds like Barbie girls. I’m not kidding. They can be dark and melodic as hell, but they have this light touch of whimsy you just don’t often find. Their greatest album evah is Autumn Leaves, which contains the incomparable “A Thousand Rivers.”

But my favoritest ever black metal band in the entire universe is Dimmu Borgir. They balance everything to perfection. Some of the drumwork on Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia completely rearranged my friend Eric and my heart rhythms – you know an album’s good when you have to hold on to furniture and gasp, “Oh my fucking God that’s amazing!” every thirty seconds. And stage presence – holy shit. Spiritual Black Dimensions remains my favorite album of theirs, even so. The clean vocal work on it transports. Tremendous.

2. Symphonic Heavy Metal

And oh, shit, here we go with the bargaining. “But-but-but what about power metal?” my brain whines. Bugger.

But symphonic heavy metal is one of my absolute most favorite genres of music in the entire universe. I love the way it fuses the power of metal with operatic voices. It wraps around me like an epic poem come to life.

Nightwish Tarja Nightwish, not this new-lead-singer bullshit they’re trying to foist on us as the real thing – was my introduction into the genre. Tarja has one of the best voices anywhere. This is one of those people who could sing the phone book and leave you in ecstatic tears. Oceanborn is probably their best album, but I have to admit a tender spot for Century Child as well.

I thought I’d be upset when Liv Kristine left Theatre of Tragedy, but then she hauled off and started Leaves’ Eyes. Holy. Fucking. Shit. Viking themes, some of the most powerful riffs in the universe, and Liv just pouring out the liquid crystal vocals. So far, Vinland Saga is their absolute pinnacle, but it’s early times yet.

And I thought, that’s it. There’ll never be anything better. Then I discovered Epica. Wow-e-wow. They’re aptly named. Epic, indeed. Everything about that band is epic – the music, the lyrics, and certainly Simone Simons’s singing. I haven’t got a favorite album, yet, because I’m hopelessly smitten with everything they’ve ever done, but I’ll put forth The Phantom Agony as a good place to start.

*coughpowermetalBlindGuardian/Demons&Wizards/Savatage/IcedEarthcough* Sorry. Terrible frog in my throat, just then. Right, moving on.

3. Dark World Music

I’m going to be an evil beastie and filch this label for the kind of music that fuses elements of ancient and traditional music with modern forms. Calling this stuff “eclectic” or “gothic metal” just doesn’t capture the full flavor. And it’s got lots o’ flavor.

Dead Can Dance was the first band that showed me, indeed, the dead can dance. They pulled from a variety of sources that most people only hear of in music colleges and turned it into tremendous modern music. They do the most haunting version of the Irish ballad “The Wind That Shakes The Barley” that I’ve ever heard. You want to hear 16th century Catalan like you’ve never head it before? Go to them. Ditto for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Just incredible. A delightful exploration of their work can be found in A Passage in Time.

Loreena McKennitt is another world traveller, and she’ll tell you stories in her liner notes. She’s heavily Celtic influenced, but you’ll get a taste of the ancient Middle East here and there, as well as France, Spain, and a thousand points between. And the harp – oh, how that woman can harp, in the best possible sense of the word. I started my Loreena McKennitt addiction with The Book of Secrets, but there’s no reason not to own absolutely everything she’s ever done.

I stumbled across Qntal on AOL’s gothic station. No shit. It’s gothic in about the same way as Tom Leh
er
is comedy – you could call them that, but you’re missing the fact they transcend those categories. Absolutely divine. I have no idea how to really describe them – there’s definitely a Medieval feel, but utterly modern. Transcedental. It’s the kind of music I put in when I want to be transported beyond the world. I began my journey with Qntal V: Silver Swan.

And, already, I feel the pain of leaving out so many incredible genres and bands. Your turn to suffer. I know some of you are going to worry about leaving a novel in the comments, but don’t. Just let yourselves gush. Music is one of the greatest gifts of being human, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t indulge in oceans of enthusiasm over it.

Friday Favorite Music

Friday Favorite Food

I’m hungry right now, so I’m dreaming of fajitas.

I could live on fajitas. If I had nothing other than those for the rest of my life, I’d eat happy every day.

My recipe is world-famous. I can claim this because a gentleman from New Zealand who had travelled extensively in Mexico and spent his time in America deploring the state of our Mexican food restaurants told me they were the best damned fajitas he’d ever had.

You can judge for yourself:

1 lb chicken breast, cut into strips
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 onion, sliced
Many cloves of garlic, chopped
Generous splash o’ Buffalo Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
Generous splash o’ white wine
Dana’s Open Secret Fajita Spice Mix
Corn tortillas
Salsa and sour cream for garnish

First, you’ve got to have the right spice. So what you do is, shake up a packet of Lawry’s Fajita Mix, a packet of paprika, a packet of New Mexico chile powder, and a packet of garlic powder. If you can’t find the stuff in packets, just layer it in a small Tupperware container. All of the layers should be about equal, maybe a little heavy on the chile powder depending on personal preference. You should end up with a nice, red-orange mix.

Now liberally dust that excellent mix over the chicken with your splash o’ Buffalo Jalapeno Pepper Sauce and your splash o’ white wine, and work it in. Your chicken should now be lobster red. Set it aside to soak up the goodness. Marinating an hour is the least you can do.

Sautee the onion and bell pepper. Usher the veggies aside, and sautee your chicken. Add the garlic towards the last five minutes. While you’re doing that, brush your tortillas with a wee bit o’ vegetable oil and heat them up in another pan. Make sure you flip frequently so they don’t burn. You can tell they’re done when the oil’s no longer glistening.

Layer the chicken and veggies on the tortillas, and bury them under a metric ton of sour cream and salsa (or picante sauce, yum), if you’re anything like me.

Damn it. Now I’m really hungry. You can torture me further by sharing your favorite food. And don’t feel bad if you didn’t create it – you discovered it, you enjoyed it, and that’s accomplishment enough!

We’ll do desserts another Friday, when I’m in the mood for culinary torture again.

Friday Favorite Food

Friday Favorite Cheesiness

I think we’re going to start a new tradition ’round here: Friday Favorites. It’s the end of the week and we deserve a bit o’ fun, do we not?

This week’s Friday Favorite is all about the cheese. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

1. Favorite cheesy movie: I’ll take two. First, Lost Boys. That’s got to be the absolute cheesiest vampire movie of all time, complete with outrageous howler of a one-liner at the end. But my favorite scene in that movie is when the “heroes” come boiling out of the vampire cave screaming “Start the car!”

Garrett and I have lived that scene, back in our younger days when we went to scary remote places and terrified ourselves at every little noise. Nothing like going back to the car because you’re in a dark, isolated, eerie forest hearing things follow you up the hillside, and a few moments later hearing your friends screaming “Start the car! Start the fucking car!” as they come pelting down the path. And so, when we watched Lost Boys and saw that scene, we had to stop the movie while we laughed our guts out.

Secondly, Austin Powers. My friends had to drag me. “It’s a stupid spy spoof about the Sixties,” I whined as they frog-marched me into the theater. “I hate the Sixties!” By the end of the movie, I sounded like a deformed hippie and was in search of a feather boa. Yeah, baby! I ended up commissioned to dozens of our call center’s Valentine’s Day bags because I went with an Austin Powers theme on mine – “This is my bag, baby, yeah!”

2. Favorite cheesy band: The Wazoos. I can’t find their music online, but they’re a great little local Northern Arizona band. They did polka and Iron Butterfly covers. They did an acapella version of Helter Skelter, for fuck’s sake. How cool is that? They’re awesome great fun, and I once got my jacket signed by them. If only the ink hadn’t rubbed off…

3. Favorite cheesy website: Homestarrunner.com. Strong Bad’s email, wherein he provides advice on death metal. Oh, fuck yeah! Just go watch it.

4. Favorite cheesy fill-in-the-blank: I’ll be magnanamous and allow you to choose your own cheese. I’m going with a comic book: The Tick. What’s not to love about a clueless superhero based on a bloodsucking insect, whose sidekick is an accountant in a moth suit? Join me in the famous battlecry: SPOON!

And the one-liners. “I shall call you Speak, because that’s what you do.” “Can’t. Do. Plaid.” “He likes me to wear it open.” “Heh heh. That’s not rational, is it?” “Well, that guy’s nekkid.”

Over to you, my darlings. Name your cheese.

Friday Favorite Cheesiness