ChronosCat

"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illuminates reality, revitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity." - Cicero, a Roman philosopher, in his oration "De Oratore" in 55 BC. "There is nothing as annoying as someone for whom the world is new. At least to those for whom the world is old." - Jennifer Finney Boylan "The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive." - O.A. Battista "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." - Booker T Washington "I do the very best I know how - the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference." - Abraham Lincoln "The point is not to live forever. The point is to live so forever knows you were once here." - Unknown "Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." - Marston Bates "In mathematics we don't understand things, we just get used to them." — John Von Neumann "Belief without doubt is merely opinion." - Unknown "The more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded." - Marcello Truzzi "Death had to take [Theodore Roosevelt] sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight." - Woodrow Wilson "Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Either thought is frightening." - Arthur C. Clarke "A paradox is truth standing on its head to attract attention." - Nicholas Falletta "Unless you change direction, you're apt to end up where you're headed." - Chinese Proverb "The pattern of human population growth in the twentieth century was more bacterial than primate." - Edward O. Wilson "A principle difference between human beings and ants is that whereas we send our young men to war, they send their old ladies." - Bert Holldobler & Edward O. Wilson "It is not every day that someone calls to offer you a free spacecraft." - Peter H. Smith (Professor of Planetary Science at University of Arizona) "You are yourself. There's no one else you could be." - Yoko Belnades, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "Before you go saying how absurd someone else is, remember, you live in a society where girls are encouraged to poke holes in their ears and dangle metal and rocks from them." - CPUX "Flaming eyes! I want flaming eyes. Or maybe I don't, I would probably burn myself with them." - DeaExMachina "In a democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes." - Mogens Jallberg "Nobody ever told Picard that 'Ye cannae change the laws of Physics!'. They just DID it." - Vampiress Kat "I sometimes suffer from ADHLAS - Attention Deficit... HEY LOOK, A SQUIRREL!" - Overlord 808 "Interested in time travel? Meet here last Tuesday." - Unknown "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal

Or Dumbledore. Or Tommy... The Pinball Wizard A Merlin/Gandalf/Dumbledore also needs to be wise, or good at faking it. (Ideally they should have a long white beard, too, but for many with a masculine body type that doesn't even require magic.) To be The Pinball Wizard on the other hand requires that you're deaf, dumb, and blind (at least according to the song). ...Incidentally, when Scotty said "Tommy" my first thought was "What? Tommy may be the coolest of the Power Rangers, but last I knew he was no wizard."

"I once thought I made a mistake, but I was wrong." - Unknown "I am allowed to be a hypocrite, you are not!" - Unknown "What happens when an ultimately omniscient and omnipotent being attempts to make a random-number generator with an output they can't predict?" - Krid "Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before..." - Attributed to Steven Wright "War does not determine who is right, it just determines who is left." - Unknown "The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people." - Terry Pratchett "Films are not released; they escape." - Ben Burt "It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs." - Principia Discordia, by Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst) "We should start the Society to Prevent the Overuse of Acronyms except you know everyone would just shorten it to SPOA and that would really defeat the purpose." - Antoine Bruce "The less one knows about a mystery, the better story one can tell about that mystery." - Unknown "Ignorance killed the cat, curiosity was framed." - Mike Bruner "I don't want to be quoted, and don't quote that I don't want to be quoted." - Winston Burdett "So in conclusion, this thread's gotta have more cowbell or it can't get over 9000. And we can't have that, or Chuck Norris will roundhouse kick our faces. In the end, is this madness? This is Sparta! And when in Rome, all your base are belong to us. Ya rly! Srsly." - Kyrio

Too tired to put my thoughts on this strip into words, but I did want to say: Yay for double-starburst background in panel one!

Warning: I'm leading with a quote from a Nazi today... "Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship or a communist dictatorship. [..] Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Herman Goering to Gustave Gilbert during the Nuremberg Trials, as recounted by Gilbert in "Nuremberg Diary". ...And now back to more lighthearted fare... “Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.” - attributed to Hans Christian Anderson. "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - William Bruce Cameron; often miss-attributed to Einstein. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Unknown, possibly a paraphrase of a statement by C.E.M. Joad; often miss-attributed to Einstein. '"Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint." - attributed to Markus Herz by Ernst von Feuchtersleben; often miss-attributed to Twain. "Those guys on TV you see, giving the inspirational seminars, teaching you how to reach your potential and become rich and successful like them? You know how they made their money? By giving seminars. " - David Wong "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick "Viruses are well supported by their authors, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So, Windows is not a virus." - Unknown (the earliest use of it I can find is by "SamSim" on slashdot.org, in 2004). "A high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" - Unknown "Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such "Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something." - Unknown, often attributed to Plato "If someone tells [Pac-man] guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns." - Tohru Iwatani "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all run around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music." - Marcus Brigstock "Halloween! I love any holiday that successfully combines ancient druidic rituals with teeny tiny snicker-bars." - Sam, in a Sam & Max comic

Immortals can have beards too; Jerry and Old Demetrius both had them.

Meh, the original version was snappier. (And more widely applicable, for that matter.)

Comic creator edition: "Your problems are utterly alien to me. It's like a bear complaining to a shark that its' knees hurt." - Questionable Content, by J. Jacques "You haven't seen true geekdom until you've watched Snape and Sephiroth face off in a duel to the death in front of a crowd of bewildered mall patrons." - Questionable Content, by J. Jacques "In short: there are no rules. And here they are." - Scott McCloud, Making Comics "The slightest opening for confusion will inevitably let in a breeze. " - Dan Shive "I'm aware this is a comic with weresquirrels and magic, but that would have made no sense whatsoever. " - Dan Shive A - "I have an opinion and I am expressing it." B - "My opinion is different and I too am expressing it." A - "I must now defend my opinion for someone else's opinion differs." B - "I must now defend against the defense of the first opinion." A & B - "INFINITE LOOP POWERS, ACTIVATE!" - Dan Shive, responding to a forum argument back in the keenspot days. "Being afraid doesn't run my life -- it just offers valuable guidelines." - Mr. Pip, "Bone: Tall Tales" by Jeff Smith and Tom Sniegoski "Verbing weirds language." - "Calvin & Hobbes" by Bill Waterson "Sometimes I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." - "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Waterson "The universe doesn't care what you believe. The wonderful thing about science is it doesn't ask for your faith, it just asks for your eyes." - xkcd, by Randall Munroe

I watched Voltron loyally until it was no longer available to me (I forget if the local station stopped playing it or if the channels available to me changed; my family moved a couple times during that period), at which point I switched to Transformers and soon came to love it just as much. I was pretty upset when they canceled Transformers, but a couple years later I was given a new cartoon to obsess over, TMNT. ...And all that before I turned 10 (not that I ever let growing older stop me from watching cartoons).

Well, at least there were occasionally episodes where there was a plot-related reason why they didn't form Voltron right away (usually the villains temporarily being genre savvy enough to actually try and separate or disable some of the lions or pilots before they could form Voltron).

Often times quotes are attributed to famous people who never said them, or the version of the quote that most people know is not exactly what they said. Not wanting to perpetuate such mistakes if I can avoid it, I've tried to do a little research on the following quotes. Where I couldn't find any info, or it's not sure whether they actually said it, I say below that it's "attributed to" them. (Mind you, my research was far from thorough, so I do not promise 100% accuracy.) "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless" "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." - Niels Bohr "Anyone who has not been shocked by Quantum physics has not understood it." - Niels Bohr "Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill (often mis-quoted to refer to "men" or mankind in general) "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure about the former." - Attributed to Albert Einstein by Fredercik S. Perls "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." - Albert Einstein, "Sidelights of Relativity" "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible." - Albert Einstein, "Physics and Reality" "If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it." - Attributed to Albert Einstein Albert Einstein in response to a book entitled "100 Authors against Einstein": "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the world blind and toothless" - Attributed to Mohandas Gandhi "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." - Attributed to Groucho Marx "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." - Mark Twain (Appears in "More Maxims of Mark" by Merle Johnson; Twain scholars consider the book likely accurate.) "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain, "Mark Twain's Notebook" "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." - Mark Twain, "The Autobiography of Mark Twain" "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." - Mark Twain (in an article in "The Galaxy", July 1870) "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives." - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" "If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat." - Mark Twain, "Mark Twain's Notebook"

I wonder if that's an old fire-wand, a candle the Uryuom is lighting and putting out with his own new fire spell, or what?

Oh yeah, I was going to post some of my favorite quotes here. I actually have a long list - so long this post would be huge if I did them all at once. So I suppose I'll do it a few at a time. "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." --Roger Sessions, paraphrasing Albert Einstein "Inspiration is like the tide. First it floods your mind, then it quickly disappears leaving you with nothing but mud and a stranded boat." -- Unknown "Remember! Always listen to random intuition! It just might be the convenient plot device that saves your butt!" -- Sensei Greg "In the underground labyrinths, Link will come across some doors that will close behind him once he's passed through them. Yet, there's always a way of opening them and escaping. Even if Link's closed in on all sides he's not allowed to give up. Try anything to get out!" -- The Legend of Zelda Instruction Booklet "All Life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the Truth! This is my belief! ...at least for now." -- The Mystery of Life, Volume 841, Ch 26 (Chrono Trigger)

Just like cats, really.

I don't know, I always assumed the Will of Magic only applied to Earth-style magic on Earth (or something like that) and that Uryuoms developed the Worker Suits on the Uryuom home-world for use in hazardous jobs, for the same reasons humans invented clothing - it just took Uryuoms a bit of science to develop clothing that would play well with their shape-shifting, and they never developed a nudity taboo (well except for the Uryuoms who integrated into Human cultures).

I figured that she had last checked her spellbook within the last few days, but the spell changed between that point and when she started casting spells at Tedd's. So it was just a quirk of timing that it seemed like she wasn't keeping up. No experience with tabletop RPGs, just video game ones, but I have played several games where when you gain a new level, you have a choice of skill/spell to learn, as part of a tree of skill development (Diablo II and Final Fantasy X come to mind). On the other hand, in most JRPGs I've played (particularly from the NES and SNES eras), each character had a specific list of spells that they always gained in order, so I can see where hkmaly is coming from.

I never saw a full episode of either show, but I did hear that Xena was a villain (or at least an adversary) when she first appeared on Hercules. Perhaps that's where the "antihero" label comes from?

And young kaiju. But that tends to be rough on the local buildings and infrastructure. Just young? Most fights between adult kaiju are territorial disputes, rather than for fun.

Because some people like to pretend their pets came off an assembly line? ...Considering the health problems many pure-breed dogs and cats have, perhaps it would be better for everyone involved if those people just bought robot "pets".

But do they need to say "eh" in almost every sentence? In some fields of science, it's practically a requirement that things have snappy and/or easy to remember names. If they couldn't come up with an acronym, they might have just called it "Iris" anyway.

I hope so too. No one witnessed the fall; she was found a few hours later. I really hope she was unconscious the entire time. After they got her to the hospital she was sedated, and later given morphine, so I suppose from that point on she was as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

She's passed. I've spent so much time preemptively mourning her over the last couple of days that now I'm to emotionally drained to feel much additional sadness, though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it hits me again. In the mean time though, it's at least a little bit of a relief to know that it's over.

My grandmother is in the hospital after falling down her cellar stairs and hitting her head badly; she's not expected to make it. The timing is particularly cruel too (not that any time would have been a good time). She lives a good four hour drive away, so we were usually only able to see each other a few times a year; our next visit was going to be next week, and we had recently been talking about how we were both looking forward to it...

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/gam-05 It's an epic battle of epicness! Or not. Oh, and yay for starburst background in panel one!

I look exactly like my avatar. It's my real world body that doesn't look like me.