Quotable Thursday #63

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. – Walt Whitman.

Quotable Thursday #62

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope. – Bill Cosby.

Quotable Thursday #61

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. – Dion Boucicault.

Quotable Thursday #60

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers. – Orison Sweet Marden.

Blog of Note: October

This blog doesn’t need me to help it get viewers or anything like that, but it is definitely one that I visit on a fairly regular basis: Cute Overload. Such adorable photos and videos with usually adorable and/or clever remarks about them. I have heard/read that it takes quite a lot of persistence to get a photo posted on Cute Overload, so what goes on there should be the best, right?

Quotable Thursday #59

“Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves.” – Benjamin Disraeli.

Quotable Thursday #58

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” – Bertrand Russell.

Way Back Whenesday: Care Bears

I remember watching the Care Bears battle Wizard No Heart his assistant Beastly and niece Shreeky. The ten original Care Bears consisted of Bedtime Bear, Birthday Bear, Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Funshine Bear, Good Luck Bear, Grumpy Bear, Love-a-lot Bear, Tenderheart Bear, and Wish Bear. Later on, additional bears joined them, as well as the Cousins. I had Care Bears bed sheets when I as younger and I think the pillow case followed me to university for a little while as a novelty thing (also because I didn’t want to buy a new pillow case). Though I don’t know if I could sit through an entire Care Bear episode and know I would never make it through one of their movies, I do enjoy seeing Care Bear items (shirt, etc) for sale in stores.

Quotable Thursday #57

“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” – Calvin Coolidge.

Way Back Whenesday: Classic Mortal Kombat

My brother and I used to play Mortal Kombat. No, he played Mortal Kombat with his friends and I would mash buttons against the computer when he would let me use his systems.
The Mortal Kombat movie is one of my guilty pleasure movies and I love the theme song, especially the techno version that is at the end of the movie.

I am mentioning this now because Dave just recently bought the new Mortal Kombat video game for PS3 for Justin’s birthday (it was an early present) and the two of them have been playing it in their spare time ever since.

Quotable Thursday #55

“There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain.

Quotable Thursday #54

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon Bonapart

Green Ideas: Heating #1

Planning a party? Turn the thermostats down. Each guest is the equivalent of a 175-watt heater, and a large group will warm up the place without the furnace or the heating units in operation.

Quotable Thursday #53

“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.” – Honore de Balzac

Quotable Thursday #52

“We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility."” - Mark Twain.

Way Back Whenesday: Pocket Organizer

I remember when I was younger and loved the idea of electronic gizmos and the assumed importance of people who had them (and even more so of people who actually needed them). I got a little pocket diary and I loved it. I used it as an address book and calculator and of course diary as that was its original purpose. I used to make up stories and pretend to chat with people online (this was before this was a common thing for children to do). It was a great source of entertainment for me. Every so often the little watch battery that ran it would die and I would have to start all over again. Sometimes I would lose it and by the time I found it, it was dead and needed a restart. Eventually it lost its appeal as chatting because an everyday thing and as I really didn’t have a need for the other features, I stopped using it. I haven’t seen it in a very long time, though I suspect that it it sitting in a Rubbermaid container in my parents’ shed back home.

(photo from http://www.canstockphoto.com/)

Quotable Thursday #51

“There is no wealth but life.” – John Ruskin

Quotable Thursday #50

“The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence” - Marie Edgeworth.

Way Back Whenesday: The Munsters

For Christmas we got my dad the complete series of The Munsters.

Similarly to the Adams Family, The Munsters was a sitcom about a monster family. There was the Frankenstein dad (Herman), the bride of Frankenstein wife (Lily), a vampire Grandpa, a werewolf son (Eddie) and a human neice (Marilyn). They of course didn’t see themselves as different but rather worried that their normal neice Marilyn would never find a man. Great show that I remember watching with my Dad.

Ambrose Bierce

A little while ago I used a quote from Ambrose Bierce for my Quotable Thursday feature. I usually try to link the quoted person to their wikipedia page so that you can go and learn more about them if you so please. In the process of doing that this time however, I saw that this person had an interesting story – he disappeared.
Ambrose Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist. He was born in 1842 and earned himself the nickname “Bitter Bierce” primarily because of his motto ‘nothing matters’.
In 1913 the then elderly writer traveled to Mexico to gain a firsthand perspective of the country’s ongoing revolution. According to Wikipedia:

“In October 1913 Bierce, then in his seventies, departed Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December he had proceeded through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca.

Bierce is known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December 26, 1913. After closing this letter by saying, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination," he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history.

Oral tradition in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, documented by the priest James Lienert, states that Bierce was executed by a firing squad in the town cemetery there. However, all investigations into his fate have proven fruitless, and despite an abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in mystery.”

I don’t know much more than what is in the Wikipedia link, but thought it was rather interesting and wanted to share it with you.