Senores, if fortune turns her wheel so that my master decides not to be an emperor but an archbishop, I'd like to know now: what do archbishops errant usually give their squires?

sancho panza, in don quixote by miguel de cervantes, pt.1, ch.26, trans. edith grossman

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."

-David Foster Wallace

via gibbs

Well folks, you say "potato," I say "you go straight to hell!" This is tip of the hat/wag of the finger!

steven colbert

colbert report, april 7 2010

In other words, evangelicals seem to be inherently inconsistent, striking a pose at once adaptable and rigid, progressive and conservative, modern and old-fashioned, at ease and at odds with American ideals. The result of these apparent anomalies is a religion that on Sunday is comfortable with the church looking like the world (such as [Contemporary Christian Music]) and throughout the rest of the week insists that the world look like the church (as in family values.)

D.G. Hart

that old-time religion in modern america, pg. 215.

if you've ever taken a standardized test, you've wondered this. don't try to deny it.

via xkcd

Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse from 317-289 BC:

The historian Justin says that Agathocles was born in poverty but very early in life parlayed his remarkable beauty into a career as a prostitute, first for men, and later, after puberty, for women, then made a living by robbery before becoming a soldier.

[...]

Having banished or murdered some 10,000 citizens, and thus made himself master of Syracuse, he created a strong army and fleet and subdued the greater part of Sicily.

[...]

His last years were plagued by ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus, at whose instigation he is said to have been poisoned (by his eromenos, Menon of Ægista, who poisoned the tooth-cleaning quill)

from the wikipedia article. i believe the correct response would be hoots of mocking and not-even-slightly derisive laughter. at least, that was my response.