Yesterday at the Office Supply Superstore I ran into an elderly couple who seemed to be having a generally bad day. I walked up to them in the furnitutre pad and cheerily queried, “Can I help you with anything?”

Nice Old Lady: “We need to measure some of these desks.”

Usually I would point out that the measurements are clearly listed next to the price, but it didn’t seem like that was something she’d want to hear, and so I was pondering my options when I noticed the Nice Old Lady was pointing at my crotch.

Nice Old Lady: “Is that a tape measure in your pocket?”

Me: “No, but Thank You!”

It was a good day at work.

On this page, you can find a few quotes belonging to the last person you would expect. They’re all surprising, but my personal favorite is #7:

#7 Who blocked the marriage of his son and disowned him, commenting:

“How can I, who has always advocated renunciation of sex, encourage you to gratify it?”
(The son subsequently became a homeless alcoholic.)

-Gautama Buddha
-Martin Luther King
-Albert Schweitzer
-Mahatma Gandhi

According to the web page I linked to, which, since it’s on the internet, is an iron-clad source, the person who said this was Mahatma Gandhi, dealing with his son Harilal.

The next time someone asks me why there aren’t more people like Gandhi in the world, I’ll inform them it’s because people like Gandhi don’t pro-create.

My programming teacher gave us a very useful tutorial on how to find bugs in our programs, about which he said:

“You should have seen it, I’d have people from my networking classes lined up starting outside my door and wrapping around the quad to visit me and ask questions during my office hours.

And since I gave out this tutorial, well…

I’m lonely.”

Jim Wallis is my new hero. A Christian author that I agree with? Rare at best. But below are a couple of quotes from him that are right on the money:

Wallis: We all like moral values, most of us do, Jon, but it’s like “Are there only two?”
Stewart: Right.
Wallis: Only abortion and gay marriage. The Republicans seem to say that. Well, I’m an evangelical Christian which means 3,000 verses in the Bible about poverty. So I would say fighting poverty is a moral value. I would say protecting the environment, God’s creation, is a moral value. I would say how and when we go to war, and whether we tell the truth about it, is a moral value. Is torture a moral value? So, let’s have a better conversation about this.

Absolute quality. Here’s a shorter, but equally powerful quote.

“Religion does not have a monopoly on morality.”

-Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It

In the DVD edition of Star Wars IV, there’s a scene where Han Solo is talking to Jabba the Hut and says:

“Jabba, you’re a wonderful Human Being.”

…which has inspired me to join him in making interspecies compliments. Today I will test out the following:

“Tish, you’re a wonderful Koala Bear.”

“Jeff, you’re a fantastic Cockroach.”

“Patrick, you’re a life changing Dung Beetle.”

It’s electrifying dialog like this that made George Lucas who he is today.

At the Office Superstore where I am employed, we are selling a brand new chair. Normally this wouldn’t be news in and of it self, but I thought it’s unusual color was worth mentioning. Not that dark red is all that unusual a color, I recently enjoyed a college football game where both teams had a dark red represented on their uniforms, with the lighter shade humiliating the darker; No, what makes this particular particular shade of dark red worth mentioning is that it is referred to in all capital letters as OXBLOOD. It’s comforting to know that if somebody asks, “What color is the inside of an adult castrated Bull?”, I’ll have a reference with which to point. The oddest thing about this color is that I’ve heard it mentioned before; I’ve heard it before and this is the first time it struck me as odd. Every other time this color has been mentioned in my presence I thought it completely ordinary that the blood of a bovine should be used to describe the color of the drapes or davenport that someone saw earlier that day.

The question as to why Staples decided to go with this particular name when so many others would have done just fine does have me puzzled. I imagine the conversation to have gone not completely unlike this:

*One Day in Marketing*
Karl: Hey Marcy, what shade of red would you say this chair is?
Marcy: It almost looks like a deep burgundy…
Karl: ..But not quite.
Marcy: It definitely has hints of maroon.
Karl: But not enough hints to lead me to an answer.
Marcy: Perhaps Cardinal?
Karl: Oh no, that’s not anywhere close.
Marcy: Then wine!
Karl: No, no, NO! None of those are right. It’s something more… more… more Pagan.
Marcy: Pagan?
Karl: Yes, Pagan… or maybe… Old Testament. Something that says sacrifice…
Marcy: Ox Blood?
Karl: PERFECT.

Then again, maybe I’m just imagining things.

For those that have been influenced by Pascal’s wager, which basically states that you’re better off believing in god because there’s no punishment if you do believe in him and he doesn’t exist, but if he does exist and you don’t believe in him, you’re in trouble, there’s a new religous option available to you.

I always enjoy meeting proffessors on the first day of classes, they’ve always got their rap for the first day down, so they’re at their peak, and there’s no stress between the professors and the students due to GPA concerns, so it’s really the one day where our relationship is the most pure and perfect. Also, they say some amusing stuff:

“It turns out that confused and bored are very similar expressions.”
–Professor Franklin

“I mean, let’s face it, you only absorb maybe a third of what I teach you…

…ok, maybe less.”
Professor Smith

I was watching Florida State play in their bowl game the other day when they decided to interview the first lady of Florida State, Head Coach Bobby Bowden’s wife. Bobby Bowden has been coaching college football since before the the AFL or the NFL even existed. And that’s not an exaggeration, he’s been coaching since the 1950’s.

So when they asked Bobby Bowden’s wife how long she would give him the green light to keep coaching as he inches closer and closer to retirement with every knee creaking step, I was surprised to hear the following response from his wife of 55 years:

“He can keep coaching as long he keeps winning.”

So it’s not necessarily win or die for Bobby, but it is win, tie, or divorce.

“Why would the police bother to arrest innocent people? Because they are easier to catch.”

-Jeremy Hardy