Lance runs marathon

"For the level of conditioning I have now, that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I ever did, from triathlons to cycling. Even the worst days on the Tours (de France), nothing was as hard as that and nothing left me feeling like that in terms of fatigue and soreness."
- Lance Armstrong

Baboons...

"They break windows to get into houses. They even know how to open doors. And once inside, they make a mess. They empty the fridge, ruin furniture, and defecate all over."

Politics...

"The Simple Answer Is He Thinks Murder's Wrong"...
- Tony Snow On Bush's Promised Stem Cell Veto.

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Hmmmm.

Starts a war in Iraq...which has resulted in the deaths of 14,000.

Refuses to intervene in the current Israel Lebanon situation....

Life with Dogs

"I had a babysitter once...I think it was in second grade. I spent a good deal of the time alone with dogs. I'd sing and talk to the dogs and draw pictures.... My parents had strange ideas about parenting." - Neko Case

Obscene Sistine?

"If you look closely at the angels who attend the scary prophetess on the Sistine ceiling known as the Cumaean Sibyl, you will see that one of them has stuck his thumb between his fingers in that mysteriously obscene gesture that visiting fans are still treated to today at Italian football matches. It means something along the lines of: how would you like this inserted into your rectum, ragazzo?" - From the Sunday Times Online

Shared Experience

"We all now live in a more insular, distanced society. And though our communication capability has never been faster or more inclusive, it does not have the ability to let us experience the silent interrelating that happens in a live theater, at church or at a movie house." - Peter Bogdanovich

Scientific Principles

"Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principles and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icarus don't." - Richard Dawkins

Media bias?

"Of course, the media focuses on bad news, on death and violence. First of all, [the Iraqi war] is a war which has been hugely expensive in terms of blood and treasure. And secondly, that's the way life is. It's not a bias of the media. If it was a bias, then why has cable news talked about murders? Why don't they have whole shows that talk about childbirth?.... So it's incredibly naive, it's partisan, and it's ironic for people who claim to be rooting out bias to start saying we should be biased in how we report the war." - Richard Wolffe

Uphold which?

"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." - Jamie Raskin.

Poached Eyes?

"He thought they looked like two soft-boiled eggs, others preferred to call them poached. Either way, any attempt to describe the appearance of Peter Lorre must deal with those eyes. What teeth are to Julia Roberts and lips to Angelina Jolie, his bulging eyes were to Peter Lorre, his unavoidable calling card and a feature quite out of proportion with the norm." - Bee Wilson

North vs. South

"In a very subterranean way, I wanted to talk about how northern people always have this dream of the perfect South — this perfect island that is paradise.... But for many people without irony, who consider themselves civilized people, these dream islands are a sort of paradise for them. At the same time, they are completely afraid of this nightmare of being invaded by hordes of people from the South who are trying to intrude upon this beautiful occidental northern economy." - Clair Denis on her new film "The Intruder".

Film Snobbery?

"[F]ilm snobbery isn't about having even a primitive critical sensibility; it is about possessing arcane information, holding it close and using it to exercise a pathetic sense of superiority over less obsessively informed but possibly more intellectually and emotionally balanced moviegoers. It is also, of course, a way of setting oneself in opposition to the smug bourgeoisie. By defending the indefensible splatter pic through incomprehensible exegesis, you become the Nietzsche of the niche market." - Richard Schickel