gleanings

The true measure of generosity is not how much one gives but how much, after giving, one has left over. —Joseph Epstein

No one I heard or read suggested that maybe killing himself was a sensible act, that by shooting himself in the head Kurt Cobain might have resembled those stout heroes who show up at hospitals having sawn their own mangled arms free of grain augers with penknives to save themselves from bleeding to death. There is no obvious reason why we should assume that a depressed person does not see the truth of his or her situation clearly. Indeed, one of the reasons so many depressives are also creative is that they see more than the rest of us, not less. That is why they are important to us, why we expect them to bear that burden of seeing for us and why we mourn them when they are gone. —James Krohe Jr, in Illinois Times

Can IRS forms written in English be far off? —tax lawyer Conrad Teitell's reaction to an IRS announcement that it would be printing Form 1040A in Spanish (WSJ)

Stupid Microwave Tricks: Lightly grease your microwave with sunflower oil. Position as many grapes as there are players on one side of the oven, stem side facing the wall. Close the door, hit Start, and place your bets as the grapes, thanks to the physics of heat transfer, skate across the hot oil. As with Formula One racing, the best part is when the cars explode. —Wired

Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, told the London Daily Telegraph last fall that if the Vatican comes across life in space, the Church "would be obliged to address the question of whether extraterrestrials might be brought within the fold and baptized." The Church would ask any new beings it stumbles across in outer space — whether he/she/it — knows a Jesus who has redeemed you. —New Times

The main [joke God played in evolution] is to propel the process through catastrophic episodes of mass extinction. Another is to give us consciousness but then saddle us with so many unwanted legacies from the past, like dealing with an enormous sexual drive, or having the kind of emotions that make us very upset when we realize we're going to die. The third one is to give us the kind of mentality that makes us think we're the most important creatures on earth when we're surrounded by insects and bacteria who are doing much better than we are. —paleoanthropologist Stephen Ray Gould

We had a 6.6 earthquake that brokeless eggs than you guys do when you're working. —manager of nation's largest chicken farm, in California, to his employees after an earthquake caused only a few empty pallets to topple

From Omni magazine, which invited readers to invent their own bar drinks:
Sinead O'Connor: Irish whisky and Nair
Honeydew the Dishes: Midori and Dawn
American in Paris: Kentucky bourbon and champagne
Three Men & a Baby: Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniels and warm milk
Marie Antoniette: bourbon, cake mix and flat beer
Fuzzy Naval Base: peach schnapps, orange juice and ammonia
Blood Clot: vodka, tomato juice and jello
Blue Moon: corn whisky and Aqua Velva
A Rum With a View: Bacardi and Visine

From the Morality in Media Newsletter, March/April 1992: The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to review the broadcast indecency case [that struck down the previous 24-hour ban on broadcast "indecency" as unconstitutional and required the FCC to allow programming aimed at adults to air late at night], thus inviting pornographic "pigs into the parlor" during evening hours, left many of us momentarily stunned. The possible future of TV flashed before our eyes and here is what would happen: First, frontal nudity, male and female, will be eased in to become commonplace. Following on its tail will be sexual intercourse, maybe with dots over the genitals at first, but then ultimately with the dots removed after the desensitization process has taken its toll. A little vulgarity will be sprinkled in of course, with four-letter words. Finally, all stops will be pulled, and emerging on the screen in your living rooms will be sexual orgies, both heterosexual and homosexual; sodomy; sadomachochism; activities involving excrement; and a variety of sexual perversions.

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. —Joan Didion.

In the apartment next to us are two young men who entertain a lot, and one day somebody leaned out their window with a rifle equipped with a spotting scope, searching the courtyard and the street. I assumed it was a toy, but in any case I simply pulled the blinds; one can't react to everything. —Edward Hoagland, City Rat

"Love wants a knightly lover, good with his weapons and generous in serving, sweet-tongued and a great giver, who knows what is right to do and say, outdoors or in, for a man of his potency. He should be amusing company, courtly and pleasing. A lady who lies with a stud like that is clean of all her sins. —Bertran de Born, 12th century.

I'm not going to hurt him, but I am going to kill him with love. —Dr. Rochelle Konits, 41, to an undercover cop she had unwittingly hired to drug and kidnap a male doctor to fulfill her sexual fantasies.

God, Chip, your butt is getting big. —my mother, Christmas Day

"Rodney Fox was attacked by a 1,200-pound Great White Shark. He fought off the shark by gouging its eyes, but not before it tore open his entire upper torso, requiring 500 stitches. He still has a scar the shape of the shark's jaws. Rodney is wearing the water-resistant Timex Ironman Triathlon watch. It costs about $45." —magazine advertisement

"Love is when you like someone a lot and then you go through a lot of shit together." —overheard by G.S. & C.R. at a D.C. bar

"He told me of his love for good fabrics and how he wore women's underpants. But they wouldn't permit that in the paper. So, now you know." —reporter Lois Wille, at her retirement from the Chicago Tribune, on an interview she once conducted with Cary Grant.

"In studies we've done, about 16 percent of bear gallbladders in the U.S. tend to be fake. They're really from pigs. So this is enormous fraud." —Ed Espinoza of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service, in the New York Times.

"Show me a happy person, and I'll show you a person who's not in a relationship." —men's movement guru John Bradshaw.

"There's a lot of underlying philosophy to the characters on 'Gilligan's Island.... They're really a metaphor for the nations of the world, and their purpose was to show how the nations of the world have to get along together or cease to exist." —Sherwood Schwartz, who created the show [How about this? Gilligan, U.S.; Skipper, Eastern Europe; Professor, Asia; Ginger, Western Europe; Mary Ann, neutral countries; Mr. Howell, oil nations; Mrs. Howell, Central America.]

"The biblical God is a macho male warrior. Though he said, 'Thou shalt not kill,' he ordered death for all opposition. He punishes offspring to the fourth generation; ordered pregnant women and children ripped up; is partial to one race of people; spread dung on people's faces; sent bears to devour 42 children who teased a prophet; punishes people with snakes, dogs, dragons, swords, axes, fire, famine and infanticide; and said fathers should eat their sons. Is that nice? Would you want to live next door to such a person?" —from a pamphlet distributed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation

"The Zephyr reports that several parents have complained about sexism in an alphabet-teaching program in which the letters are characters: all the consonants are male, and only the five vowels are female." —Chicago Reader [But you need a vowel in every word, don't you?]

"You should leave your bedroom window wide open at night in the winter, so you aren't poisoned by fumes inside your house." —my second-grade teacher, circa 1974

"One Chicagoan recalled giving $7 in a commuter railway station to a man who said he needed money to get home to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Three days later, he saw the same man at the same place, telling the same story. 'I was annoyed to realize I had been conned, but I was really angry to think I had been conned by a mope not smart enough to realize that in a commuter station the same people go by at about the same time every day.' " —Chicago Reader

From a press release: "So says Charles Patrick Ewing, a forensic psychologist and author of the books, 'Kids Who Kill' and 'Battered Women Who Kill.'... Ewing is now writing a book on 'Fatal Families,' concerning husbands, wives and children who kill one another."

"Mr. DePippo also disclosed that the suspect, after his arrest, had been told not to wash his hands or put them in water, suggesting that they were to be examined for traces of bomb making chemicals. Soon afterward, Mr. Elgabrowny [the first suspect arrested in the World Trade Center bombing] asked to go to the bathroom and, when given permission, plunged his hands into a toilet bowl containing urine. Mr. Elgabrowny's lawyer, Michael Warren, explained the toilet bowl incident by saying that as a Muslim, the defendant was obligated to "cleanse" himself "before praying." —New York Times

"[Branch Davidian Paul Fatta] compared Koresh, who has sexual relations with about 19 women he calls wives, to the prophet Isaiah: 'The [Bible] teaches that Isaiah married two prostitutes, and if he came up to you, with these whores hanging on his arms, and said he had a message from God, would you listen to him?' Mr. Fatta said. 'Do not judge a person by his actions, but by the message that he has.' " —New York Times

"Among Mr. Koresh's regular chants was a simple one he invented himself. Half the followers would shout, 'Who's gonna destroy the Babylonians?' then march in place for three counts before the other half would yell out in response, 'We're gonna destroy the Babylonians!' " —New York Times

"Marc Breault, who sometimes played bass in the rock band Koresh organized in the compound, says that even practicing together was difficult because Koresh threw tantrums when he hit a wrong note in front of others. 'It's very difficult being in a band with God's messenger,' says Breault." —Time