Lib Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Lib. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Where I grew up, women’s liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage for 15 minutes so she could stretch her legs.
John Rachel
Jessica. For god's sake," he said. "Allow me to do at least one common courtesy for you. In spite ow what 'women's lib' teaches you, chivalry does not imply that women are powerless. On the contrary, chivalry is an admission of women's superiority. An acknowledgment of your power over us. This is the only form of servitude a Vladescu ever practices, and I perform it gladly for you. You, in turn, are obligated to accept graciously.
Beth Fantaskey (Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Jessica, #1))
I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.
Bill Watterson (The Revenge of the Baby-Sat (Calvin and Hobbes, #5))
The Bible looks like it started out as a game of mad libs.
Bill Maher
It’s Yiddish. Like…Ikh hob dikh lib.” Evie narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What does that mean?” Sam smiled. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you.
Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
They say the world is a stage. But obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines." "Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce." "We need more special effects and dance numbers.
Bill Watterson
I mean, what good is a women's lib if we can't use it to ask guys to dances?
Cynthia Hand (Unearthly (Unearthly, #1))
'Legs are for men's pleasure, breasts are for babies'.' " - Lib McGovern
Pat Frank (Alas, Babylon)
Good nurses follow rules,” Lib growled, “but the best know when to break them.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized - as a reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
Cracking his knuckles, Cary dramatically prepared to open his fortune cookie. “Let’s see. Will I be rich? Famous? About to meet Mr. or Ms. Tall, Dark, and Tasty? Traveling to distant lands? What’d you guys get?” “Mine’s lame,” I said. “In the end all things will be known. Duh. I didn’t need a fortune to figure that out.” Gideon opened his and read, “Prosperity will knock on your door soon.” I snorted. Cary shot me a look. “I know, right? You snatched someone else’s cookie, Cross.” “He better not be anywhere near someone else’s cookie,” I said dryly. Reaching over, Gideon plucked half of mine out of my fingers. “Don’t worry, angel. Your cookie is the only one I want.” He popped it in his mouth with a wink. “Gag,” Cary muttered. “Get a room.” He cracked his fortune with a flourish, and then scowled. “What the fuck?” I leaned forward. “What’s it say?” “Confucius say,” Gideon ad-libbed, “man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.” Cary threw half his cookie at Gideon, who caught it deftly and grinned. “Give me that.” I snatched the fortune out from between Cary’s fingers and read it. Then laughed. “Fuck you, Eva.” “Well?” Gideon prodded. “Pick another cookie.” Gideon smiled. “Pwned by a fortune.” Cary threw the other half of his cookie.
Sylvia Day (Bared to You (Crossfire, #1))
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. Bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. A sound you could smell. This man worked for the carnival,you dig? And to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. After a while, the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared... and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teethlike... little raspy incurving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it... but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street... shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags. Nobody loved it. And it wanted to be kissed, same as any other mouth. Finally, it talked all the time, day and night. You could hear him for blocks, screaming at it to shut up... beating at it with his fists... and sticking candles up it, but... nothing did any good, and the asshole said to him... "It is you who will shut up in the end, not me... "because we don't need you around here anymore. I can talk and eat and shit." After that, he began waking up in the morning with transparentjelly... like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands... like burning gasoline jelly and grow there. So, finally, his mouth sealed over... and the whole head... would have amputated spontaneously except for the eyes, you dig? That's the one thing that the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. Nerve connections were blocked... and infiltrated and atrophied. So, the brain couldn't give orders anymore. It was trapped inside the skull... sealed off. For a while, you could see... the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes. And then finally the brain must have died... because the eyes went out... and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye at the end of a stalk.
William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat)
'I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You're vegetating. I don't want a vegetable. I want a man.' " - Lib McGovern
Pat Frank (Alas, Babylon)
A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the Star Wars or Star Trek universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies. Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it's excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to.
Roger Ebert (A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck)
Dating takes too much time. I wanted you. I took you. You’re mine.” She shivered. Women’s lib could say what it wanted. Being claimed by a sexy male still held loads of seductive charm.
Eve Langlais (A Tiger's Bride (A Lion's Pride, #4))
Women's lib, Frannie had decided, was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society. Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn't get with child, but a woman could---every four-year-old knows it. And a pregnant woman is a vulnerable human being. Civilization had provided an umbrella of sanity that both sexes could stand beneath.
Stephen King (The Stand)
If you had a baby…,” I said. “When I have a baby,” came the deep, heart-shattering reply, “she’ll be my whole world.” “She?” I repeated. Nash settled back into his seat. “I can picture Lib with a little girl.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
I swallow hard. “No one will ever matter like you do, Lib.” “No one will ever matter like you do either,” she whispers.
Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
(Really, thought Lib, who ever died exultingly? Whatever fool penned that phrase had never sat by a bed with his ears pricked for the last rasp.) Aged
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
Grinning, he grabbed his fisherman’s cap and coat. “I love you,” he whispered quietly. “Ikh hob dikh lib.” He kissed Evie’s head. She rustled in her sleep, turning away. “Fine. I see how it is. I just wasted my best Yiddish on you,” Sam joked to himself.
Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
The urge to leap across feminism to "human liberation" is a tragic and dangerous mistake. It deflects us from our real sources of vision, recycles us back into old definitions and structures, and continues to serve the purposes of the patriarchy, which will use "women's lib," as it contemptuously phrases it, only to buy more time for itself—as both capitalism and socialism are now doing. Feminism is a criticism and subversion of all patriarchal thought and institutions—not merely those currently seen as reactionary and tyrannical.
Adrienne Rich (On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978)
It was a scandal, calling out women for changing the rules on men with no warning because of their vapid women’s lib and their stupid sexual awakenings. Sexual awakenings were not supposed to extend beyond what was merely an upgrade in enjoyment for men.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
God is not looking for incredibly high notes, intricate riffs or award winning ad-libbing. God is looking at the heart.
Temi Peters (Instruments of Praise & Acts of Worship)
Confucius say," Gideon ad-libbed, "man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.
Sylvia Day (Bared to You (Crossfire, #1))
One never imagined that as the decades went by, one might drift into an unbounded country. It struck Lib now how alone in the world she was.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
I’m new to the area. I could get lost. Next thing you know, I’m half-starved, and in my weakened condition, I could be eaten by wild, rabid bunnies.” “Bunnies?” I hadn’t wanted to laugh but did anyway. “Of all the animals, you go with bunnies?” “Have you ever looked in a bunny’s eyes, Libs? They’re just waiting for their chance to dominate. Why do you think they’re always so twitchy?” “Because they’re freaked something’s going to eat them for dinner?” “Nope. They’re plotting. It’s just a matter of time before they make their move. Mark my words.
Kristen Callihan (Idol (VIP, #1))
Women don’t buy with me,” he said quietly. “I get it, women’s lib and all, got no problem with that. But you’re with me, I pay. No discussion, definitely no stupid-ass fight. That’s just the way it is with me.
Kristen Ashley (Games of the Heart (The 'Burg, #4))
Adults could be barefaced liars too, of course, and about no subject so much as their own bodies. In Lib's experience, those who wouldn't cheat a shopkeeper by a farthing would lie about how much brandy they drank or whose room they'd entered and what they'd done there. Girls bursting out of their stays denied their condition till the pangs gripped them. Husbands swore blind that their wives' smashed faces were none of their doing. Everybody was a repository of secrets.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
Some libs took offense at my David Broder quip earlier. In my own defense, I was taught in college it's OK to disrespect dead white males.
James Taranto
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain-porridge unleavened literature licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they're Lib Dem supporters. I mean had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties instead of standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed.
Frankie Boyle (Work! Consume! Die!)
When one’s young, everything is a rehearsal. To be repeated ad lib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.
Sybille Bedford (A Compass Error)
In fact the English nurses had spent much of their time stuffing mattresses, stirring gruel, and standing at washtubs, but Lib didn't want the nun to mistake her for an ignorant menial. That was what nobody understood: saving lives often came down to getting a latrine pipe unplugged.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
How dull would it be to consume my meat with only one variety of sauce? My body and spirit would whither, being fed on such limited fare. To sample the delights of a great many women is considered right and healthy for a man, yet the opposite is held true for those of our sex. Where we display undue interest in sexual matters, even within marriage, we are thought immoral. For myself, I can only conceive of such limitation with horror: a torture for which I have no taste.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club
Emmanuelle de Maupassant (The Gentlemen's Club)
Emma Coats, a former storyboard artist at Pixar, outlined the basic structure of a fairy tale as a kind of Mad Lib that you can fill in with your own elements: “Once upon a time, there was _____. Every day, _____. One day, _____. Because of that, _____. Because of that, _____. Until finally, _____.
Emma Coats (Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (Austin Kleon))
…schools as we know them appear designed at every level to sabotage the supposed goals of education.
Ted Nelson (Computer Lib/Dream Machines)
It takes three weeks to prepare a good ad-lib speech.
Mark Twain
Bisexuals are really attracted to senior Lib Dems - as they are both a man and a great big pussy.
Frankie Boyle
In childhood, Lib remembered, family seemed as necessary and inescapable as a ring of mountains. One never imagined that as the decades went by, one might drift into an unbounded country.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
If the potato blight had been such a long catastrophe, ending only seven years ago, it occurred to Lib that a child now eleven must have been born into hunger. Weaned on it, reared on it; that had to shape a person. Every thrifty inch of Anna's body had learned to make do with less. She's never been greedy or clamoured for treats - that was how Rosaleen O'Donnell had praised her daughter. Anna must have been petted every time she said she'd had plenty. Earned a smile for every morsel she passed on to her brother or the maid.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
Clyde, she said it’s fine. What? Really?” Mom huffed. “Your dad wants to know if ‘fine’ is code for ‘please come home, I’m being held hostage by hormonal maniacs.’” Pause. “And if said hormonal maniacs are listening he wants them to know he will cut off vital body parts and watch them bleed out a slow and torturous death then bury said body parts on different continents throughout the world so he will never be brought to justice and will revel in their excruciating demise for the rest of his life because they had the nerve to cause his daughter any discomfort whatsoever.” I grinned. “Mom, Dad didn’t say that.” “I may have ad-libbed that last part. But he did ask about the hormonal maniacs.
A. Kirk
The thing about women is that they got liberated too fast. They never learned to be straightforward about life because they had to sneak around for about a thousand years tricking men into doing things they wanted. So they manipulate you instead of telling you what they want, so you never know where the hell you are. And then they get mad at you and bitch.
Jennifer Crusie (Manhunting)
Don’t know if you noticed,” I say with false lightness, “but it’s raining cows and chickens out there.” Her snort buffets my skin. “Cows and chickens?” “This here is farm country, Libs,” I drawl “Ain’t no cats and dogs filling these skies.
Kristen Callihan (Idol (VIP, #1))
Hop on the good foot and do the bad thing.
Roger Price (Austin Powers Mad Libs)
Sitting watching Anna’s eyelids flicker some hours later, Lib found herself longing for the sleep she should have had that afternoon. But this was an old battle, and like any nurse, she knew she could win if she spoke to herself severely enough. The
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
What Women's Lib might achieve if their 'consciousness raising' - or in plain English, brainwashing— campaign succeeds is a society whose members have identical roles but are perpetually at war with themselves; a society of males made neurotic by suppressed masculinity, of females made miserable by having masculine roles thrust upon them that contradict their feminine impulses.
Arianna Huffington (The Female Woman)
Thank you.” Lib tried to think of some more conversational note to end on. “It’s always intrigued me,” she said, letting her voice rise, “why you Sisters of Mercy are called walking nuns.” “We walk out into the world, you see, Mrs. Wright. We take the usual vows of any order—poverty, chastity, obedience—but also a fourth, service.” Lib had never heard the nun say so much before. “What kind of service?” Anna broke in: “To the sick, the poor, and the ignorant.” “Well remembered, child,” said the nun. “We vow to be of use.” As
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
The only problem with the Angels' new image was that the outlaws themselves didn't understand it. It puzzled them to be treated as symbolic heroes by people with whom they had almost nothing in common. Yet they were gaining access to a whole reservoir of women, booze, drugs and new action -- which they were eager to get their hands on, and symbolism be damned. But they could never get the hang of the role they were expected to play, and insisted on ad-libbing the lines. This fouled their channels of communication, which made them nervous ... and after a brief whirl on the hipster party circuit, all but a few decided it was both cheaper and easier, in the long run, to buy their own booze and hustle a less complicated breed of pussy.
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
The women's liberation movement of today in America, in its most oceanic sense, is a wish by women to be liked for something other than their reproductive abilities, especially since the planet is harrowingly overpopulated. And the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment by male state legislators is this clear statement by men, in my opinion: "We're sorry, girls, but your reproductive abilities are about all we can really like you for." The truth.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage)
If I am capable of loving you Lord MacCaulay, of devoting myself to you, it will never be under the terms to which other women submit, for I am battle-born – a female warrior sworn to defy the bonds which enslave those of my sex. I will not, purely to follow common ideas of decency and femininity, give up my enjoyment of other men.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club
Emmanuelle de Maupassant (The Gentlemen's Club)
some years later, that he had “faith,” then add, “I also have faith in penicillin, rifampin, isoniazid, and the good absorption of the fluoroquinolones, in bench science, clinical trials, scientific progress, that HIV is the cause of every case of AIDS, that the rich oppress the poor, that wealth is flowing in the wrong direction, that this will cause more epidemics and kill millions. I have faith that those things are true, too. So if I had to choose between lib theo, or any ology, I would go with science as long as service to the poor went along with it. But I don’t have to make that choice, do I?
Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World)
Bernard: ... By the way, Valentina, do you want credit? - 'the game book recently discovered by.'? Valentine: It was never lost, Bernard. Bernard: 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib for the lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that? Valentine: Very kind.
Tom Stoppard (Arcadia)
In gravitational fields there are no such thing as rigid bodies with Euclidean properties; thus the fictitious rigid body of reference is of no avail in the general theory of relativity. ... For this reason non-rigid reference-bodies are used, which are, as a whole, not only moving in any way whatsoever, but which also suffer alterations in form ad lib. during their motion... This non-rigid reference-body, ... might appropriately be termed a "reference mollusc,"...
Albert Einstein (Relativity: The Special and General Theory)
The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble.
Ellen Feldman (Next to Love)
Whoever pretends that a technician, an architect, a doctor, an engineer, or any type of scientist should merely work with the in­struments in his own specific field while his people starve to death or fall in battle, has in fact taken the side of the enemy. He is not apolitical, he is political-but in opposition to movements for lib­eration.
Ernesto Che Guevara
Those fruity stenches brought Lib back to Scutari, where the sedatives always seemed to run out halfway through a run of amputations. As
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
From having nursed alongside a variety of women, Lib knew that self-mastery counted for more than almost any other talent. She
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
You might start a new religion yourself, with the creed: 'There is no one so clever as Hercule Poirot, Amen, D. C. Repeat ad lib.'!
Agatha Christie (The Labours of Hercules (Hercule Poirot, #27))
This women’s lib stuff works for rich girls, but all you’ve got going for you is your face and your figure. You need to take advantage of both before you lose them.
Karin Slaughter (Cop Town)
#ExMuslimBecause Misogyny, homophobia, stoning people to death, and killing apostates don’t suddenly become “respectable” when put in a holy book. —@LibMuslim
Ali A. Rizvi (The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason)
meeting, but first they must travel in a rattletrap submarine to the Gorgonian Grotto, a dangerous underwater cave, in search of the sugar bowl. ISBN 0-06-441014-5—ISBN 0-06-029642-9 (lib.
Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #11))
Still, despite controlling both houses of Congress during the second Reagan administration, they let a brain-dead right-wing president get away with carrying out an HBO miniseries’s worth of Iran-Contra crimes, which was pathetic. And here’s a dose of irony to sweeten the pill: Reagan selling arms to Iran in order to fund rape squads in Central America really did make Watergate look like a “third-rate burglary.” So if libs want to keep holding up Watergate as a historic triumph for the forces of good, they’ll have to admit that letting Reagan off the hook represents a far greater historic triumph for the forces of evil.
Chapo Trap House (The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason)
But to sever all your connections, professional as well as personal..." Lib fumbled for words. "Wouldn't it be like a little death?" Byrne nodded. "I believe emigration generally is that. The price of a new life.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
For years in this country there was no one for black men to vent their rage on except black women. And for years black women accepted that rage—even regarded that acceptance as their unpleasant duty. But in doing so, they frequently kicked back, and they seem never to have become the “true slave” that white women see in their own history. True, the black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept. And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself. —Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” The New York Times, 1971
Tara M. Stringfellow (Memphis)
TV irony changed in post-modern times. Irony, which exploits the difference between what is said and what is meant, and between how things appear and how they really are, used to be a reliable trope for exposing hypocrisy. Post-modern irony is not liberating, but rather imprisoning. Wallace quoted the poet and philosopher Lewis Hyde: ‘Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
Stuart Jeffries (Everything, All the Time, Everywhere Lib/E: How We Became Postmodern)
We're obsessed with filling in the blank for a Mad Libs line that goes: "_____ makes us human." Why? Scratch and sniff the "what makes us human" obsession and you get a strong whiff of something that could fit into that blank: our insecurity.
Carl Safina (Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel)
The Times had announced that seven thousand pounds had been raised to send a party of Englishwomen to the Crimea as nurses. That, Lib had thought, with dread but also a sense of daring, I believe I could do that. She’d lost so much already, she was reckless. All
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
An obsession, a mania, Lib supposed it could be called. A sickness of the mind. Hysteria, as that awful doctor had named it? Anna reminded Lib of a princess under a spell in a fairy tale. What could restore the girl to ordinary life? Not a prince. A magical herb from the world's end? Some shock to jolt a poisoned bite of apple out of her throat? No, something simple as a breath of air: reason. What if Lib shook the girl awake this very minute and said, Come to your senses! But that was part of the definition of madness, Lib supposed, the refusal to accept that one was mad. Standish's wards were full of such people. Besides, could children ever be considered quite of sound mind? Seven was counted the age of reason, but Lib's sense of seven-year-olds was that they still brimmed over with imagination. Children lived to play. Of course they could be put to work, but in spare moments they took their games as seriously as lunatics did their delusions. Like small gods, children formed their miniature worlds out of clay, or even just words. To them, the truth was never simple. But Anna was eleven, which was a far cry from seven, Lib argued with herself. Other eleven-year-olds knew when they'd eaten and when they hadn't; they were old enough to tell make-believe from fact. There was something very different about - very wrong with - Anna O'Donnell.
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
On April 30. 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, the temporary national capital. He took the oath of office on a Masonic Bible, ad-libbing the words “So help me God,” which the oath of office as specified in the Constitution does not require.
Kenneth C. Davis (America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation)
It seemed to me that because of things like car accidents and lost loves, life and death and broken hearts, we should grab every moment and absolutely devour the good parts. Wouldn't she want that? For me to ad-lib my life instead of living by some typed-in-twelve-point-Courier-New script?
Lynn Painter (Better than the Movies (Better than the Movies, #1))
—so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off. "Hurrah for women's lib, eh?" "The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed." The apocalyptic word jars my attention. "What do you mean, doomed?" She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …" "Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?" Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different. "Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see." Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons. "Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch." No answering smile. "That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a—a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine." "Sounds like a guerrilla operation." I'm not really joking, here in the 'gator den. In fact, I'm wondering if I spent too much thought on mahogany logs. "Guerrillas have something to hope for." Suddenly she switches on a jolly smile. "Think of us as opossums, Don. Did you know there are opossums living all over? Even in New York City." I smile back with my neck prickling. I thought I was the paranoid one. "Men and women aren't different species, Ruth. Women do everything men do." "Do they?" Our eyes meet, but she seems to be seeing ghosts between us in the rain. She mutters something that could be "My Lai" and looks away. "All the endless wars …" Her voice is a whisper. "All the huge authoritarian organizations for doing unreal things. Men live to struggle against each other; we're just part of the battlefield. It'll never change unless you change the whole world. I dream sometimes of—of going away—" She checks and abruptly changes voice. "Forgive me, Don, it's so stupid saying all this." "Men hate wars too, Ruth," I say as gently as I can. "I know." She shrugs and climbs to her feet. "But that's your problem, isn't it?" End of communication. Mrs. Ruth Parsons isn't even living in the same world with me.
James Tiptree Jr.
I will here give a brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species. Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created. This view has been ably maintained by many authors. Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true generation of pre existing forms. Passing over allusions to the subject in the classical writers (Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2), after remarking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to organisation; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first pointed out the passage to me), "So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish." We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth.), the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details.
Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species)
Objection 1: It would seem that light is a body. For Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. iii, 5) that "light takes the first place among bodies."Therefore light is a body. Objection 2: Further, the Philosopher says (Topic. v, 2) that "light is a species of fire." But fire is a body, and therefore so is light.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica (5 Vols.))
Have you ever looked in a bunny’s eyes, Libs? They’re just waiting for their chance to dominate. “Why do you think they are always so twitchy?” “Because they’re freaked something’s going to eat them for dinner?” “Nope. They’re plotting. It’s just a matter of time before they make their move. Mark my words.
Kristen Callihan (Idol (VIP, #1))
In 1970, Women's Lib preached universal sisterhood and resistance to "patriarchy" anywhere and in any form; today, Women's Studies, like contemporary establishment feminism generally, is meekly multicultural, treating non-Western social practices with deference even when they involve the brutal subjection of females.
Bruce Bawer (The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind)
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
A Nightingale!” he marvelled. Ah, so Matron had told him that much. Lib was always shy of introducing the great lady’s name into conversation and loathed the whimsical title that had come to be attached to all those Miss N. had trained, as if they were dolls cast in her heroic mould. “Yes, I had the honour of serving under her at Scutari.” “Noble labour.” It
Emma Donoghue (The Wonder)
We came here head to toe and now we are millions and now we demand to sit upright
Eve L Ewing (1919 Lib/E)
The star panelist was Ted Nelson, the wild-eyed author of the underground sensation Computer Lib. (Nelson also co-invented hypertext, by which words in one article can link to a related page, a pervasive aspect of today’s Web.) He summed up his wild philosophy in four maxims: “Most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong.
Paul Allen (Idea Man)
The rest of us have to play along with God’s little game of Russian roulette, His eternal lesson to live it up while you can. And far be it for me to turn away from God—let’s get a drink.
Pamela L Hamilton (Lady Be Good Lib/E: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale)
Mad Lib Elegy" There are starving children left on your plate. There are injuries without brains. Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day removing tiny seeds from mixtures they cannot afford to smoke and cannot afford not to smoke. Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts of hair removal and therefore resent our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas. Imprisonment increases life expectancy. Finish your children. Adopt an injury. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back, I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of_______] 70% of pound animals will be euthanized. 94% of pound animals would be euthanized if given the choice. The mind may be trained to relieve itself on paper. A pill for your safety, a pill for her pleasure. Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter but not by loud weeping. Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games are all the rage among lifers. The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry. The capitol is redolent of burnt monk. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of _______] There are two kinds of people in the world: those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities, ‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those that respond to their majesty emotionally. 70% of the planet is covered in parking lots. 94% of a man's body is parking lot. Particles of parking lot have been discovered in the permanent shadows of the moon. There is terror in sublimity. If Americans experience sublimity the terrorists have won. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of _______]
Ben Lerner
Anyhow, hey ho, let's go…Fuck, there was a band. Punk meets cartoons. Glorious dumbfuckery, standing there, legs spread, guitars scraping the floor. Three chords, two minutes and one finger right up Simon Cowbell's arse. Auto tune this, ya cunt. And The Clash. Strummer, king of the ad lib. 'Fill her up Jacko!' Don’t mind if I do, Joseph, don’t mind if I do. Thrashing it out on stage in yer Brigade Rosse tee
Robert Cowan (For all is Vanity: A dark psychological drama)
As St. Augustine remarks (lib. 20, de Civit., C. 30), the events pertaining to the end of the world will happen in the manner they have been foretold, but as to their accidental circumstances, God alone knows the order in which they will take place. He has revealed nothing explicitly on this point, and consequently, our knowledge of them is confined to mere conjecture, possessing a greater or less degree of probability.
Paschal Huchede (History of Antichrist)
Sometimes we need to give space for grief in order to make room for joy. No one is immune to sorrow, and only those who learn to grieve well can recapture the healing it brings. Just as light needs darkness, so joy needs grief.
Margaret Feinberg (Fight Back with Joy Lib/E: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears)
We had expected to take losses," Colonel John Kane said, "but I never will forget those big Libs going down like flies." His radio operator, Ray Hubbard, added, "I looked through the open bomb-bay doors and could see flames from exploding gas tanks shooting right up into us. The fire wrapped us up. I looked out of the side windows and saw the others flying through smoke and flames. It was flying through hell...I guess we'll go straight to heaven when we die. We've had our purgatory.
Leon Wolff (Low Level Mission)
as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty, which has not yet proved illusive. This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): “The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition,” and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity’s common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people—a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men’s minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
There was a criticism written millennia ago but it is usually not considered, and that is in Aristophanes’ Assembly of Women, where they tried to establish a fully egalitarian society. And the women do that,and for this purpose: the women must rule. So this kind of inequality of the two sexes must prevail, just as the women’s lib movement would also lead in practice to gynecocracy, not to equality. All right, then we have this beautiful situation: everyone is equal and the women are the mothers who feed their children, the males. And a part of this, the feeding, is of course also sexual gratification. And here there comes in the difference between women who are attractive and women who are not attractive. A natural inequality. Therefore the legislator has to make a special law in order to equalize that inequality. So that (if I may be so crude, but since Aristophanes has done it before me I have some excuse) if a young man cannot sleep with a young girl before he has slept with an ugly one, there is a privilege given to the inferior to equalize people. That is the problem.
Leo Strauss (Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil)
In addition, the Zionist apparatchiks dominating the Neo-lib Obama administration had long personally detested Qaddafi because of his strident and uncompromising support for the Palestinians against Israel. There was a strong element of typical Zionist vindictiveness put into operation by the Obama administration and the U.S. news media in their gleeful vendetta against Qaddafi and his family, though the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Psychiatrists call this phenomenon “transference.” Zionism is a mental illness–evident among some more than others.
Francis A. Boyle (Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution)
She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
ლილი _ გოლფის მოედანი, თორემ... დევი _ რა, "თორემ"? შენ იცი, რომ მალე აქ გოლფის კლუბსაც კი გავხსნი?! ლილი _ არ ვიცი, გახსნი თუ არა, მაგრამ ეს მაგიდები ისევ ჯიუტად ელიან კლიენტებს... ჯი-უ-ტად! დევი _ ეს შესანიშნავი ადგილია! სამი ნომერი - პირველი, მეხუთე და მეშვიდე - მდინარის ხეობას გადაჰყურებს, ხუთი ნომერი კი - კავკასიონის მომხიბვლელ მწვერვალებს... ერთი ეს არის, რომ გარეთ ვერ მოვაწყობ გოლფის ნატურალურ მოედანს, რადგან უფსკრულმა დამაღალატა... ვერაგულად მიმტრო... რაღა აქ გაჩნდა, სხვა ადგილი ვეღარ მონახა? ლილი _ უფსკრულის სახელით ბოდიშს გიხდი, მაგრამ ის სხვაგან ვეღრ წავა. ამიტომ ისევ შენ უნდა მონახო სხვა ადგილი! კომიკური თრილერიდან "ცეკვა მკვდრებით" – http://www.lib.ge/body_text.php?855
Mikho Mosulishvili
THERE ARE EXTRAORDINARY librarians in every age. Many of today’s librarians, such as Jessamyn West, Sarah Houghton, and Melissa Techman, have already made the transition and become visionary, digital-era professionals. These librarians are the ones celebrated in Marilyn Johnson’s This Book Is Overdue! and the ones who have already created open-source communities such as Code4Lib, social reading communities such as LibraryThing and GoodReads, and clever online campaigns such as “Geek the Library.” There are examples in every big library system and in every great library and information school. These leaders are already charting the way toward a new, vibrant era for the library profession in an age of networks. They should be supported, cheered on, and promoted as they innovate. Their colleagues, too, need to join them in this transformation.
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
In every classic comedy duo, from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Martin and Lewis, in order for the exchange to work, the quality of the straight man had to be as dynamic as that of the funny guy. Carl was the best at this. I could use a single question as a springboard to unplanned exposition and tangents that would be as much of a surprise to Carl as they were to the audience. Carl was a gifted partner: While he deferred the punch lines to me, he knew me well enough to follow along and cross paths enough to set me up for more opportunities. He also knew he could throw me a complete curveball and I’d swing for the fences. We were a great ad-libbed high-wire act, and like the best high-wire acts, ours was dependent upon complete trust and respect for each other. Carl once said, “A brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to behold.
Mel Brooks (All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business)
It was a sad fact that the commonest complaint in the outpatient department was “Rasehn . . . libehn . . . hodehn,” literally, “My head . . . my heart . . . and my stomach,” with the patient’s hand touching each part as she pronounced the words. Ghosh called it the RLH syndrome. The RLH sufferers were often young women or the elderly. If pressed to be more specific, the patients might offer that their heads were spinning (rasehn yazoregnal) or burning (yakatelegnal ), or their hearts were tired (lib dekam), or they had abdominal discomfort or cramps (hod kurteth), but these symptoms were reported as an aside and grudgingly, because rasehn-libehn-hodehn should have been enough for any doctor worth his salt. It had taken Matron her first year in Addis to understand that this was how stress, anxiety, marital strife, and depression were expressed in Ethiopia—somatization was what Ghosh said the experts called this phenomenon. Psychic distress was projected onto a body part, because culturally it was the way to express that kind of suffering. Patients might see no connection between the abusive husband, or meddlesome mother-in-law, or the recent death of their infant, and their dizziness or palpitations. And they all knew just the cure for what ailed them: an injection. They might settle for mistura carminativa or else a magnesium trisilicate and belladonna mixture, or some other mixture that came to the doctor’s mind, but nothing cured like the marfey—the needle. Ghosh was dead against injections of vitamin B for the RLH syndrome, but Matron had convinced him it was better for Missing to do it than have the dissatisfied patient get an unsterilized hypodermic from a quack in the Merkato. The orange B-complex injection was cheap, and its effect was instantaneous, with patients grinning and skipping down the hill. T
Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone)
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?” “Nah I had to go relieve myself.” After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.” After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. Thats one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.
William S. Burroughs
Et tant molestement le poursuivirent qu'il fut contraint soi reposer sur les tours de l'église notre Notre-Dame, auquel lieu étant, et voyant tant de gens, à l'entour de soi dit clairement: « Je crois que ces maroufles veulent que je leurs paye ici ma bienvenue et mon proficiat. C'est raison. Je leur vais donner le vin. Mais ce ne sera que par ris. » Lors en souriant détacha sa belle braguette, et tirant sa mentule en l'air les compissa si aigrement, qu'il en noya deux cent soixante mille, quatre cent dix et huit, sans les femmes et petit enfants. Quelque nombre d'iceux évada ce pissefort à légèreté des pieds. Et quand furent au plus haut de l'université, suant, toussant, crachant, et hors d'haleine , commencèrent à renier et jurer les uns en colère, les autres par ris: « Carimari, Carimara, Par sainte Mamie, nous son baignez par ris», dont fut depuis la ville nommée Paris laquelle auparavant on appelait Leucece, comme dit Strabo lib. 4 c'est-à-dire en grec, Blanchette, pour les blanches cuisses des dames dudit lieu.
François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel)
If there was any consistency to his opinions, it was the consistent lack of consistency, and if he had a worldview, it was a view that proclaimed his lack of a worldview. But these very absences were what constituted his intellectual assets. Consistency and an established worldview were excess baggage in the intellectual mobile warfare that flared up in the mass media’s tiny time segments, and it was his great advantage to be free of such things. He had nothing to protect, which meant that he could concentrate all his attention on pure acts of combat. He needed only to attack, to knock his enemy down. Noboru Wataya was an intellectual chameleon, changing his color in accordance with his opponent’s, ad-libbing his logic for maximum effectiveness, mobilizing all the rhetoric at his command. I had no idea how he had acquired these techniques, but he clearly had the knack of appealing directly to the feelings of the mass audience. He knew how to use the kind of logic that moved the great majority. Nor did it even have to be logic: it had only to appear so, as long as it aroused the feelings of the masses.
Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
But interviews with [Margaret Dumont] reveal her to have been a perceptive and talented comic actress. “Many a comedian’s lines have been lost on the screen because the laughter overlapped,” she said in the 1940s. “Script writers build up to a laugh, but they don’t allow any pause for it. That’s where I come in. I ad lib—it doesn’t matter what I say—just to kill a few seconds so you can enjoy the gag. I have to sense when the big laughs will come and fill in, or the audience will drown out the next gag with its own laughter.” A much harder job, it must be stressed, onscreen than onstage. Margaret Dumont objected to the term “stooge,” with her usual dignity. “I’m a straight lady,” she insisted, “the best straight woman in Hollywood. There’s an art to playing straight. You must build up your man, but never top him, never steal the laughs from him.” She showed great insight into the Marx Brothers’ brand of humor: “The comedy method which [they] employ is carefully worked out and concrete. They never laugh during a story conference. Like most other expert comedians, they involve themselves so seriously in the study of how jokes can be converted to their own style that they don’t ever titter while approaching their material.
Eve Golden (Bride of Golden Images)
The fight spilled out into the press. Allen blasted the censors. “They are a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Their conferences are meetings of men who can do nothing but collectively agree that nothing can be done.” The thin-skinned network reacted again, cutting Allen off in the middle of a barb. Now other comics joined the fray. That week Red Skelton said on his show that he’d have to be careful not to ad-lib something that might wound the dignity of some NBC vice president. “Did you hear they cut Fred Allen off on Sunday?” That’s as far as he got—the network cut him off. But Skelton went right on talking, for the studio audience. “You know what NBC means, don’t you? Nothing but cuts. Nothing but confusion. Nobody certain.” When the network put him back on the air, Skelton said, “Well, we have now joined the parade of stars.” Bob Hope, on his program, was cut off the air for this joke: “Vegas is the only town in the world where you can get tanned and faded at the same time. Of course, Fred Allen can be faded anytime.” Allen told the press that NBC had a vice president who was in charge of “program ends.” When a show ran overtime, this individual wrote down the time he had saved by cutting it off: eventually he amassed enough time for a two-week vacation. Dennis Day took the last shot. “I’m listening to the radio,” he said to his girlfriend Mildred on his Wednesday night NBC sitcom. “I don’t hear anything,” said Mildred. “I know,” said Dennis: “Fred Allen’s on.” On that note, the network gave up the fight, announcing that its comedians were free to say whatever they wanted. It didn’t matter, said Radio Life: “They all were anyway.” Allen took a major ratings dive in 1948. Some
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
It’s my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn’t planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he’s nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits. Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I’d agreed to go. I guess he’d figured it’d be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don’t want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me. Always. I finally spot him in the crowd--it’s not too hard, since he’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground. Oh my God, this can’t be happening. I’ve fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I’m supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming. Heck, it’s a full-blown garden at this point. “Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!” comes the principal’s voice. “Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She’s escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. I’m afraid there’s no escort, so we’ll just--” “Ryder Marsden,” I call out as I make my way across the stage. “I’m escorted by Ryder Marsden.” The collective gasp that follows my announcement is like something out of the movies. I swear, it’s just like that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett offers one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with Scarlett, and she walks through the scandalized bystanders to take her place beside Rhett for the Virginia reel. Only it’s the reverse. I’m standing here doing the scandalizing, and Ryder’s doing the walking. “Apparently, Jemma’s escort is Ryder Marsden,” the principal ad-libs into the microphone, looking a little frazzled. “Ryder is…um…the starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and, um…in the National Honor Society and…” She trails off helplessly. “A Peer Mentor,” he adds helpfully as he steps up beside me and takes my hand. The smile he flashes in my direction as Mrs. Crawford places the tiara on my head is dazzling--way more so than the tiara itself. My knees go a little weak, and I clutch him tightly as I wobble on my four-inch heels. But here’s the thing: If the crowd is whispering about me, I don’t hear it. I’m aware only of Ryder beside me, my hand resting in the crook of his arm as he leads me to our spot on the stage beside the junior maid and her escort, where we wait for Morgan to be crowned queen. Oh, there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to tell our parents. Right now I don’t even care. Just like Scarlett O’Hara, I’m going to enjoy myself tonight and worry about the rest later. After all, tomorrow is another…Well, you know how the saying goes.
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))