AN END TO EVIL: HOW TO WIN THE WAR ON TERROR:
- Now, there's an intriguing title suggesting fresh thought. An end to evil? Do the neo-con crackpots ever stop talking as though the date were 700 BCE? Perhaps Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or others of the trailer park heavenly host are credited in the Acknowledgments with contributions or inspiration?
The title should frighten us. After all, anyone even near to influencing the use of atomic-powered aircraft carriers and
thermonuclear weapons who speaks about ending evil in foreign policy is a very dangerous person. One can't help but recall General Ripper's concerns over a declining "purity of essence" in Dr. Strangelove as he launched his strategic-bomber wing on a pre-emptive nuclear attack. But as we live in a time when an American president himself speaks this mumbo jumbo, I suppose we have added nothing to our stock of fear.
--John Chuckman, YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada), Sick puppies, 07 Jan 2004
- The Newsweek label for the 1986 Meese Pornography Commission report. More than 300 of the 1,976 pages (15%) were dedicated to depictions of hardcore pornography. "Sexpert" Susie Bright said she "came three times" while reading it.
--Defending Pornography, pg 157
- The kindest thing that can be said about the two thousand page report of the Attorney General's Commission on pornography is that it's a joke, not funny, but a joke. The commission's scholarship is ludicrous, its conclusions unsupported, its methodology zany.
--Los Angeles Times, July 1986, and reprinted in
The Reference Shelf volume Censorship, pg 69
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AUTHORIZED VERSION:
- In 1611, King James I of England appointed fifty-four scholars to produce an English translation of the Bible suitable for English-speaking protestants, no one questioned the tradition of the Mosaic authorship of the five books. The Bible produced by these scholars is the "Authorized Version" (authorized by the king, that is, in his capacity as head of the Anglican Church.)
--Isaac Asimov, In the Beginning, pg 5
[This version is more commonly known as the King James Version.]
BLACK'S MEDICAL DICTIONARY:
- "Nice present [for a hypochondriac]."
"I thought so. Thousands of diseases in it; all in alphabetical order."
--So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, Douglas Adams
- I have to laugh (when I don't cry) at the imbecility so often demonstrated in the world of business. I saw someone recently (on some show, somewhere...) who was giving examples of companies that had streamlined simply because it was a trend (Hey, let's cut the payroll!). These companies found that the work done by the people laid off had to be passed laterally to other people. Unfortunately, those people hadn't the
skills for the new work, and no great desire to take on extra tasks. So mistakes began appearing all over the place (this was at a bank). The company then went on to hire a batch of new people to review and correct the work that had been passed on to others...It was mindless.
The thing I find incredibly stupid about it all is that now there are all sorts of management books, seminars, and assorted gurus telling business how to deal with the problems of loyalty within their companies, and
problems of low morale. Like, hello? These clowns don't know? A radio station I use to work for cancelled everyone's summer vacations last year because they were implementing a new marketing strategy etc. Then, having made that announcement, the management people all went on THEIR vacations. These are the same people who scratch their heads over low morale. And over the fact that they're last in the ratings. I suppose this is good for writers: we can write books about what everyone should know
and sell them to these people. I may do that myself. Working title: THE BOOK OF THE SCREAMINGLY BLOODY OBVIOUS FOR MANAGERS.
--Bill Wren, 07 May 1996
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BURNING DOWN MY MASTER'S HOUSE:
- Yes, he was at the heart of a scandal that tarnished the reputation of one of the nation's most prominent newspapers and led to the resignation of the newspaper's editor and managing editor, but his sole claim to fame is really making things up. Can these interviews - or his book for that matter - convey anything of importance?
Blair apparently thinks so.
"When I wrote the book I made a commitment to stop lying and tell the truth, and
that obviously in telling the truth it will hurt a lot of people, but the number of people who could potentially be helped by this book far outweighs those I hurt," Blair told Editor & Publisher. "There are millions of people who can be helped by this book."
Even in a country in which shame is often supplanted by a book contract, Blair's description of his memoir as a boon to millions is a little hard to grasp. While he refers to his struggles with substance abuse and a manic-depressive
disorder, his story essentially boils down to this: If you lie and steal from others while working at one of the nation's most visible newspapers, you'll probably get caught. The experience will not be pleasant.
--Ken Paulson, Jayson Blair scandal reflects the person, not the profession, Inside the First Amendment, 21 Mar 2004
CHRISTIAN FANTASY:
- Being the heathen I am, I always thought "Christian Fantasy" had something to do with snorting blow off a gay hooker's ass while pretending that you're a happily married straight dude, but it turns out that "Christian Fantasy" is an entire literary genre that apes the themes built by giants like Tolkien and Rowling, then pastes over the icky stuff--like devil juice, err, magic. And the girl characters probably aren't so "smart" and "uppity," either.
Like the Potter series, it has mystical creatures, macabre events, epic battles and heroic young protagonists.
But, unlike the Potter books, this genre has overt Christian tones: messiah-like kings who return from the dead, fallen satanic characters and young heroes who undergo profound conversions. What you won't generally find: humans waving wands and performing spells.
Or, ya know, fun.
And certainly no resemblance to actual humanity.
--Melissa McEwan, The Washington Post indulges its fantasies of a Harry Potter book with Christian overtones, at the web journal Shakesville, 19 Jul 2007
ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE:
- An infamous Monthy Python routine centered around a foreign visitor to London whose unwitting reliance on the maliciously "helpful" phrasebook he is carrying leads to his being hauled off to the slammer. While "English As She Is Spoke," Pedro Carolino's 1855 manual intended for use by native speakers of Portuguese, might not have caused quite such a disastrous outcome, it would certainly have led to some very puzzled looks from anyone who -- unlike
its author -- was actually familiar with the English language. Featuring such idiomatic barbarities as "It is a noise which to cleave the head," "At what o'clock is to get up?," and "There is it two years what my father is dead," Fonseca's guide quickly earned an international reputation as a classic of unintentional humor. [...] As Mark Twain wrote, "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
- Much of the story is unintentionally hilarious. The monster hides in a shed adjacent to a peasant hut. One of the peasants, Felix, just happens to be teaching his girlfriend, a runaway Arabian noblewomen named Safie, his language; thus the monster learns how to talk. His reading primers are Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Werter [sic], books he has discovered in a cast-off trunk lying in a ditch. This baroque
tale-within-a-tale is only rivaled in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, when Crusoe strips naked, swims out to the foundering ship that has marooned him, and then, according to Defoe, fills his pockets with all sorts of goodies. My admiration for such invention knows no bounds.
--Stephen King, Danse Macabre, pg 64
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GREAT RUSSIAN INVENTORS:
- Josef Stalin had a simple approach to uncooperative realities -- fiction. Irked that the West was producing so many more great inventions thatnt he Soviet bloc, which by ironclad Marxist-Leninist rationale must surpass the capitalists, Stalin commissioned a team of scholars to hasten the inevitable and invent some inventors. Making up biographies was easy, the august team found, but what had happened to all the great inventions? Great Russian
Inventors, published around 1950, became the big book of great, and terribly unfortunate, Russian inventors. Each story ended in a mysterious tragedy. I'll bet you didn't know that an unsung Soviet genius ivented the most awesome tank in history -- could have cut through Hilter's Panzers like a can opener -- but, as luck would have it, the tank was so huge and powerful that it sank into a marsh, never to be seen again. . . .
--Lawrence E. Joseph, Common Sense, pg 122
GREEN EGGS AND HAM:
- Let's play a little game and distort one of Dr. Seuss's perennial favorites, shall we?
Green Eggs and Ham: The story of a peaceable vegan who is minding his own business when an apparent home invader intrudes on his privacy. When the vegan objects to the presence of this intruder, said intruder engages on [sic] a program of criminal stalking and harrassment, taunting the vegan with the stolen products of enslaved animals. In an effort to maintain his principles the vegan flees from this stalker, who drives the hapless victim before him into increasingly hazardous situations.
(And inflicting considerable property damage on a motor vehicle, a train, and a freighter in the bargain, while traumatizing a series of innocent animals that are dragged along for the ride.) In the end, tormented beyond endurance, the vegan capitulates and devours the stolen products in an effort to protect what is left of his sanity. In true parasitic fashion, the murderous meat industry twists the final scene into pro-murder propaganda by having the victimized, tormented vegan say that he
really likes eating meat.
--Michael Nellis, illustrating a point about political correctness, 27 May 2006
HATE LITERATURE:
- Yeah, hate literature is vile and reprehensible. So what? The only two things you have to take into account when considering hate literature are: 1) such ideas are bankrupt from start to finish and publishing them does not validate them in any way as a reflection of reality; 2) hate literature is a reflection of the mind that produces it and banning such a work does not alter the bankrupt convictions of the idiot who wrote it in any way, shape, or form.
--Michael Nellis, 10 Dec 2003
HOGFATHER:
- Let's see, now . . . in Hogfather there are a number of stabbings, someone's killed by a man made of knives, someone's killed by the dark, and someone's just been killed by a wardrobe . . . It's a book about the magic of childhood. You can tell.
--Terry Pratchett, author
HOW TO RULE THE WORLD:
- Everyone wants to rule the world, but only a precious few have the skills to create an ironclad plan of attack. Simple, direct, and delightfully unprincipled, this guide to ruling the world contains tales of global power mongering from every age and endeavors to show dilettante dictators and tyrants-to-be just how it's done. Tips are provided on creating a personal flag, what type of puppet government to establish, how to squelch free speech, and, most
important, how to handle enemies. Also included are humorous full-color illustrations, sidebars on admirable despots, and self-quizzes that allow readers to see if they have what it takes to conquer the world. This fun college graduation or father's day gift is perfect for those who have their hearts set on world domination.
--Product Description, book written by Andre De Guillaume [Andrew Wilkins]
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS:
- I do understand why someone would object to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It has profanity, rape, and racism. In many ways, it is an ugly book. I taught it in middle school because it also is an important book. In it, Maya Angelou relates the trials of her youth with humor, intelligence, and a gift for crafting language. For black children, it is, as Oprah Winfrey once called it, a "validation." For teenagers, it provides needed
reassurance about their own self-questioning and self-consciousness, and validates their awareness that their families don't resemble Father Knows Best (if they remember Father Knows Best at all) or Ozzie and Harriet (ditto). For children great and small, black, white, and other, it gives life to the bitter taste of racism. For me, it was the prose version of Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son." ("Well, son, I'll tell you: life for me ain't been no crystal stair. ..." It also conveys the
lesson that the scarred little girl could become the elegant, gracious, and gifted poet who would read her work at the inauguration of the president of the United States.
Does Angelou the narrator seem antiwhite? Yes. Does she seem to paint all whites with the same racist brush? I think so. That is why students should read it with the help of a teacher who can help them to evaluate what is fair and just and what is bitterness.
--Craig Lancto, Banned Books: How Schools Restrict the Reading
of Young People, circa Sep 2003
- Orwell called the novel a "satire," but if it is, it may be the only satire without one - even deeply bitter - laugh.
--Dorothy Bryant
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NOVEL:
- French novel: A story in which two people get together right at the beginning, but from then until the end of the book they don't want each other any more.
- American novel: A story in which two people want each other from the beginning but don't get each other until the end of the book.
- Russian novel: A story in which two people don't want each other or get each other -- and for 800 pages brood about it.
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OPRAH BOOK:
- The definition of an Oprah book is any book where the protaganist spends 90% of the time being miserable and 10% of the time breaking even.
--Greg McClay, posted to the LISNews web site
PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA:
- Of all the books which have profoundly influence human affairs, few have been more celebrated and none read by fewer people than Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Deliberately written in the most abstruse and technical Latin, profusely illustrated by complex geometriccal diagrams, the work's direct audience ahs been limited to highly erudite astronomers, mathematicians,
and physicists.
One of Newton's chief biographers has stated that when the Principia was published in the last quarter of the seventeenth century there were not more than three of four men living who could comprehend it; another generously stretched that number to ten or a dozen. The author himself admitted that it was "a hard book," but he had no apologies, for he planned it that way, making no concessions to the mathematically illiterate.
--Robert B Downs, Books That Changed The World, pg 152
- How is "real book" defined?
Quite simply: it is a book one wants to reread. It can stand rereading because it is very full -- of ideas and feelings, of scenes and persons real or imagined, of strange accidents and situations and judgments of behavior: it is a world in itself, like and unlike the world already in our head. For this reason, this fullness, it may well be "hard to get into." But it somehow compels one to keep turning the page,
and at the end the wish to reread is clear and strong: one senses that the work contains more than met the eye the first time around.
--Jacques Barzun, reprinted in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning, pg 115
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- [This book] only proves what the Catholic church has said about mixed marriages all along -- they just don't work.
--Tabitha King
[Stephen King's wife and quoted by him in Danse Macabre, pg 284. --MN]
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RECOMMENDED BOOKS:
- A few good books I recommend to you for your reading pleasure ...
(What a novel idea!)
---------------------------------------
The Lion Attacked: Claude Yarmoff
How to Write Big Books: Warren Peace
The Art of Archery: Beau N. Arrow
Songs for Children: Barbara Blacksheep
Irish Heart Surgery: Angie O'Plasty
Split Personalities: Jacqueline Hyde
Under the Bleachers: Seymour Butts
Desert Crossing: I. Rhoda Camel
School Truancy: Marcus Absent
I Was a Cloakroom Attendant: Mahatma Coate
I Lost My Balance: Eileen Dover and Phil Down
Mystery in the Barnyard: Hu Flung Dung
Positive Reinforcement: Wade Ago
Shhh!: Danielle Soloud
The Philippine Post Office: Imelda Letter
Things to Do at a Party: Bob Frapples
Stop Arguing: Xavier Breath
Come on In!: Doris Open
The German Bank Robbery: Hans Zupp
I Hate the Sun: Gladys Knight
Prison Security: Barb Dweyer
Irish First Aid: R.U. O'Kaye
My Career As a Clown: Abe Ozo
The World's Deadliest Joke: Theophilus Punoval
Here's Pus in Your Eye: Lance Boyle
My Life on Skid Row: Titus A. Drum
I Didn't Do It!: Ivan Alibi
Why I Eat at McDonalds: Tommy Ayk
I Hit the Wall: Isadore There
The Bruce Lee Story: Marsha Larts
Take This Job and Shove It: Ike Witt
Rapunzel Rapunzel: Harris Long
How I Won the Marathon: Randy Hoelway
Songs from "South Pacific": Sam and Janet Evening
Rusty Bedsprings: I.P. Nytely
Exercises for Improved Sexual Performance: Op N. Adam
Beating Urinary Dysfunction: Aie P. Freehly
Cruising Single Women: Amanda Hugginkiss
SCRIPTURES:
- The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
--Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary]
- The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you've lost your mind completely: You've entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. It means you're having a major identity crisis.
--Cynthia Heimel
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STUFF MAGAZINE:
- [...] the worst magazine that has ever graced my lap. It's a big, glossy, garbage scow of info-tainment, unleashed upon the fair seas of journalism by the shark-toothed, blond-frosted salesmen that gave us Maxim. A typical issue of Stuff is about 160 pages, with, at rough count, 80 pages of ads. That's right:50 fucking percent. And it still costs you 5 bucks.
Stuff generally features a model or actress in very small clothing on
the cover, usually coated with some compound that resembles donut glaze or artists' fixative. These girls are surrounded by awful floating puns ("Around the world in 80 babes," "Czech-Mate"), which hint at the horrors that lurk within. The writers seem to take a scattershot approach to humor, filling the gaps in their pages with hundreds of repetitive, predictable one-liners and broad pop-cultural references -- ideal for teens or amnesiacs. I admit I cracked a smile or two while I read, but
given a thousand-joke gross, that's a pretty poor net. And, of course, Stuff always keeps it short. There's not a single block of text bigger than the palm of your hand. Hell -- if you're already bored with this review, you may be an ideal reader for this rag.
--Randy Schaub, magazine review, 04 Jul 2003
- [1]It is a filthy, filthy book. It has 269 some odd pages or so, and if you took out all the (profanity), the sarcasm, the mockery of old people, the mockery of women and decent people, you would get to read about 10 minutes' worth. I can't figure out for the life of me why it is considered an important book.
--Howard Bagwell, censorship advocate [2] The first banned book that I read was J.D. Salinger's
classic bad-boy book, The Catcher in the Rye. I drove to nearby Amherst (a liberal college town) to buy the book, which had been banned in Boston. At the time, that did not make it a rarity, but when my English teacher mentioned that it had been banned, I counted the minutes until the final bell to satisfy my curiosity about what could make a book so vile that it could be banned by the state government. I was disappointed.
--Craig Lancto, Banned Books: How Schools Restrict the Reading of
Young People, circa Sep 2003
[3] "...the dirty language and the immoral, promiscuous life style of Holden and the boys at the school - 275 bad words in the first 52 pages including 114 times of taking the name of the Lord in vain, and 6 references to having sex. Holden was often drunk or drinking and almost always smoking. He was 16 years old at the time (the age of most of the students in the Eng. PreAP class), and we certainly wouldn't want our 16-year-old to act the way he did . . .
"
--parental complaint about its use in the curriculum
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THE GIVER:
- [Censorship] objections to The Giver did not resemble the book I read twice. Not only does the book not contain violence, it was premised on a society that prohibits violence in any form--physical, psychological, or verbal. It is not sexually explicit, unless one considers use of the word stirrings explicit. However, the society it portrays medicates youngsters at the first sign of such stirrings to subdue those objectionable impulses. Infanticide is another case.
In fact, the sterile euthanasia of an infant is the dramatic climax of the book, the event that opens the eyes of the twelve-year-old protagonist, whose horror at the act motivates him to risk his life to save another infant and to escape the community in which fear, violence, and unkindness are unknown and everything from meals to the one son and one daughter allotted each family is provided.
It is a beautiful book, a dramatic parable.
--Craig Lancto, Banned Books: How Schools Restrict
the Reading of Young People, circa Sep 2003
WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9-11 COMMISSION:
- A wag once famously said that Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was a play where nothing happened . . . twice. The two former co-chairmen of the 9-11 commission report, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have released a new book, "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9-11 Commission." This book goes Beckett one better - it is the third act of veneer over
substance, self- aggrandizement over serious analysis, and cliché over perspicacity. It is another calculated attempt by the former commissioners to place themselves in the media spotlight, and to overcome the humiliation of their widely criticized and mostly debunked report. It is a vapid and substanceless attempt to claim moral high ground and present the co-chairmen as heroes of honesty. It would be a farce, except that it has no story line, save the aggrandizement of the authors. At least
they are consistent in doing nothing and proclaiming that to be a sign of their devotion to the country and the government. Beckett once said that "habit is the ballast that chains the dog to its vomit," and by this measure the chain restraining Kean and Hamilton is a short one indeed.
--Sibel Edmonds & Bill Weaver, The 9/11 Commission: A Play on Nothing in Three Acts, 05 Sep 2006
YERTLE THE TURTLE:
- . . . possibly the best book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking.
--Lisa Simpson