“In the summer of 1969, when I was 11, I bought a stereo system at the local hi-fi shop.

It cost all of the $100 I had earned weeding neighbor’s gardens that spring at 75 cents an hour.
My father made me a proposition: he would buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home.

Those headphones changed the way I listened to music forever.”.

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession , by Daniel J. Levitin.

Requires Flash Player

“If you’re driving down the highway with your girlfriend, a really cute thing to do when you pass a smokestack is to naively ask her if that building is a cloud factory.“. (Sometimes Clouds Just Look Like Clouds, from Defunker)
“We still get about two or three emails a week telling us that we’re idiots for mixing up countries.”.

From the top:
Life shirt, detail, from Defunker. “It’s life, and it happens to the best of us.”;
Greece shirt, detail, from Busted Tees.

“Love to watch people coming in unsure of what they want, peering up at the board, realising they can”t really read it and they’re keeping everyone waiting and ordering something random in a panic.”.

“Then there’s eggbaconchipsandbeans which should be fairly self-explanatory and a good place for a cup of tea and a think, which is similarly obvious.”.

“Crispy little chips and a triangular egg. Formidable!
A big pile of bacon and a mass of beans with a splendid smear of juice up the side of the plate.”.
By Russell Davies.

“The intention of the magazine is to return dignity to the art of loafing.”.

“The current edition of The Idler is titled How To Save The World Without Really Trying
and argues that idleness is eco-friendly and that to save the planet we need to do a lot less.”.

"And what would you like to be when you grow up?"
I asked my 5 year old grand-daughter.

Blythly she came back with a show-stopper of an answer:
"A butterfly."

(Joan Bakewell, On Not Having A Career)

The Idler, by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

“It is hoped that exposing these tactics will help muzzle the growing abuse in our conversational landscape.”.

Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to Talk!, by Dean and Laura VanDruff.

This or That

“It is not a question of (this) or (that), but rather it is an issue of (whatever it is you want to say).”.

Even You

“Even you should be able to grasp the next point.”.

Distorted Active Listening

“If I hear you correctly, your point is…(get it all wrong).”.

“The only thing that exists is myself.”.
(Bomb #20 in Dark Star; John Carpenter, 1974)

Dark Star: A Science Fiction Adventure.
A screenplay by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon.