02-Ject

Psychosis

“Computer,” said Zaphod, “tell us again what our present trajectory is.”

“A real pleasure, feller,” it burbled, “we are currently in orbit at an altitude of 300 miles around the legendary planet of Magrathea.”

“Proving nothing,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t trust that computer to speak my weight.”

“I can do that for you, sure,” enthused the computer, punching out more tickertape. “I can even work out your personality problems to 10 decimal places if it will help.”

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)

01-Tiet

Dedication

The officer standing in the center of this group of Union soldiers after the battle of Antietam is Lt. Alonzo Cushing, who died less than a year after this group portrait while fighting in Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge.

Sitting at left is Evan Thomas, who was killed in ambush by the Modoc Indians a decade later in California.

31-Neva

Sportsman

On his way from Nevada to the Raceway at Laguna Seca in California.

The wheel is driven or forced by means of its engine or motor. The energy is not in the wheel which is passive to this driving agent. So it is with every manifestation of energy; and with every human motivation – it has its human impulse or impelling motive to impart motion.
THE WORD – A PHILOSOPHY (1958) by Edna Sarah Beardsley (re: power)

“In the face of the danger which confronts our time, no individual retains, or can hope to retain, the right of personal choice which free men enjoy in times of peace.” –FDR (1940)
NOTHING TO FEAR by Alan Axelrod (2003)

30-Lone

4 Replies

Solitude

When you’re in a place of natural silence, you’re not alone, and you can feel it. Whether it’s birdcalls from miles away or the proximity of a giant tree whose warm tones you can feel, there’s a presence, It’s a quieting experience.

–Gordon Hempton, in August 2023 Sun Magazine

29-Rowt

2 Replies

Daunting

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “and your hair has become very white; and yet you incessantly stand on your head – do you think, at your age, it is right?”

In my youth,” Father William replied to his son, “I feared it might injure the brain; but now that I’m perfectly sure I have none, why, I do it again and again.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

28-Case

6 Replies

Surrealism

Don’t worry about tomorrow; who knows what will befall you today?
–Yiddish folk saying

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
–Isaac Asimov

You’re at that age when everything Mother Nature gave you, Father Time is taking away.
–Milton Berle

27-Mist

Spoutings

THAT for six thousand years

—and no one knows how many millions of ages before

—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings

—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour

—this is surely a noteworthy thing.

–Moby Dick; or, The Whale (Chap. 85: The Fountain) by Herman Melville

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