saw

the devils dictionary
A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

A penny saved is a penny to squander.
A man is known by the company that he organizes.
A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
Better late than before anybody has invited you.
Example is better than following it.
Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Least said is soonest disavowed.
He laughs best who laughs least.
Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
Of two evils choose to be the least.
Strike while your employer has a big contract.
Where there's a will there's a won't.


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

new york

douglas adams
(n.) a city
In the winter time the temperature falls well below the legal minimum, or rather it would do if anybody had the common sense to set a legal minimum. The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling.

Spring is over-rated. A lot of the inhabitants of New York will honk on mightily about the pleasures of spring, but if they actually knew the first thing about the pleasures of spring they would know of at least five thousand nine hundred and eighty three better places to spend it than New York, and that's just on the same latitude.

Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyway, so their opinion can and should be discounted. When it's fall in New York, the air smells as if someone's been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe, the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building.

(also: new orleans)

unity

trustycoffeemug
Every German who chugs a beer! Every Zulu with an assegai spear!
Every Chinaman in a junk! Every Mexican in a trunk!
Every Bedouin on a dune! Every Frenchman playing Claire de Lune!
Every Syrian and Kazakhstani! Every Giorgio and his Armani!
Every Spaniard playing second flute! Every Dane, Norwegian and Aleut!
Every single guy who's Aborigine! Every Englishman who's Walter Pidgeon-y
From Hollywood, home of big celebrities- to Vanuatu in the Outer Hebrides!
From New Yorkers eatin' steak tartare! To every friend of Pablo Escobar!
From the Taiwanese and Cuban Petes, to the Russians with their soup of beets
Every Tamil, Tatar, Thai, Tibetan; everybody else that we're forgettin'
Everyone from Niger, Tonga, Bali; the French Sudan which is now called Mali
Everybody up in Katmandu! Every Canadian, cuz we're there too
Every Tajikistani with a yak! Every Bolivian in a sack!
Every caner in Singapore! Everybody who's really sore!
Every Turk in a Teaneck diner, or South African diamond miner
Every gypsy playin' finger cymbals! Everyone who ever shopped at Gimble's
We are there.

right

the devils dictionary
Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles and the like. The first of these rights was once universally believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is still sometimes affirmed in partibus infidelium outside the enlightened realms of Democracy; as in the well-known lines of Sir Abednego Bink, following:

By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
He surely were as stubborn as a mule
Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
His uninvited session on the throne, or air
His pride securely in the Presidential chair.

Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
Whate'er occurs, God wills it so. Good land!
It were a wondrous thing if His design
A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
Is guilty of contributory negligence.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

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