"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind." -H.P. Lovecraft "My self esteem is an unassailable fortress, resistant to destruction from almost any source. Being a raging egomaniac does that to you." -Canticle "If they had hung Jesus instead of crucifying him, the Christians would all be kneeling in front of a noose. Just a thought...." -Motorcycle Boy "Please enlighten us on what you think the HWG-Design List Guides should have done in this case. Gone over to Curtis' house and hit him in the kneecap with thick pieces of wood? Here's a clue (have two, they're cheap)..." -Kynn Bartlett "Six months go by very quickly when you're a genius." -Robert Plant "You have been judged by your actions and found wanting. If your magic is strong enough to overcome my killfile, then I will admit I am wrong." -Petro "'You beg for prayers for God because you are empty without having converted the minds of those more innocent than you. For this, I am their vengance!' I'm weird alright...but at least I look A LOT like Brandon Lee." -Sebastian Manfred "Alright, it beats the hell out of my answering the door dripping wet and naked with a hissing cat under my arm and asking them 'Is this important? I was working...' or something like that. They just stared and then ran screaming." -Branwyn Folsom (StrangeGirl) "There was a Santa Claus, but he's dead now, thus providing a useful lesson on the value of aerobics and proper diet." -Scott Adams "I have some Elvis Presley King of Rock and Roll socks that are more goth than most of the people currently on this group. They were given to me by ++Allison++ so now we all know that she is the bringer of that which has potential to be GothAsFuck." -William Isenhour (TSM) "I'm not weird. You're just sheltered." -Caine "In the days of yore, [alt.gothic] was filled with upstanding assholes, and the flame wars raged back and forth over important issues like Gun Control, Abortion, Socialism, Anarchy, and whether Andrew Eldritch _is_ god, or simply sits at his right hand as an advisor." -Chris Petro "I once had a dream that a box of Satanic macaroni and cheese was flying around the room, trying to kill me. Now *that* is a gothic dream." -Twilight "There are also strange, arcane internet connectivity and protocol issues which I can't go into now, because they're forbidden lore and the Net Cabal would kill me if I let their secrets out." -Kynn Bartlett "It wasn't murder, officer; it was spring cleaning the gene-pool." -Jealousy "If you don't listen to anything your 'enemy' says, you know no more of him than he knows of you." -John M. VerBurg "No skeletons in my closet; they're all in the living room drinking martinis." -Peter Caffin "Don't get me wrong--I don't mind pointless posts once in a while, but the authors usually intended the posts as such. Clearly you *thought* you had a point, but you were terribly wrong." -Little o "Goth is about using your vastly superior intelligence to devise new and interesting ways to slowly destroy yourself." -Ren "Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves." -A. "Have you ever been able to keep a straight face around someone who tried to say 'Foolish mortal!' with fangs in? It's much more like 'Thhoolith morthalthth!' About as mysterious and threatening as Sylvester the cat. Hmmmmm..... Looney Toons LARP, anyone?" -Branwyn Folsom (StrangeGirl) "I make myself sick more often than not. I'd kill myself if I could, but that would make it difficult to get my shit done (and I'd much rather kill everyone *else* anyway)." -Little o "I have come, not to bury Caesar, but to eat his salad." -Ben Jarew "At any rate... Sesame Street probably feels it has to keep its characters in the closet... tho' I tend to wonder how Miss Piggy and Kermit having sex might affect the ratings." -Exile "I feel sad today. Someone called me a 'geek.' Someone else told me not to worry though because it just means I have good taste in food. OK." -David Lynch "There were lots of Goths 2000 years ago if I am not mistaken. They sacked Rome repeatedly, I believe. They didn't listen to Sisters of Mercy, though." -Orren Merton (Lord of Wolves) "A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians." -Frank Zappa "May all your evenings be irrationally enchanting." -Rosaleen Dhu "Plainly there is no way back. Like it or not, we are stuck with science. We had better make the best of it. When we finally come to terms with it and fully recognize its beauty and its power, we will find, in spiritual as well as in practical matters, that we have made a bargain strongly in our favor." -Carl Sagan, "Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" "Now I'm vindicated for staying with NEXTSTEP all these years, and those who thought Steve Jobs was down and out should die in flames...." -Cheyne Daggett "Like the Bhagwan, driving around Rancho Rajneesh each day in another Rolls-Royce, Steve Jobs kept his troops fascinated and productive. The joke going around said that Jobs had a 'reality distortion field' surrounding him. He'd say something, and the kids in the Macintosh division would find themselves replying 'Drink poison Kool-Aid? Yeah, that makes sense.'" -Robert X. Cringely "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -Eleanor Roosevelt "Sodomy with plastic sharks is something perhaps we should discuss further." -cEvin Key "Those who don't have enough creativity to be mathematicians can go into either poetry or theater." -I forget... remind me, Professor Bowman "Erika, it's not that you like being sodomized by society; it's just that you've gotten so accustomed to it...." -Rachael Kerekes "Hardship?? What's that? Oh, is that when, like, I have to decide if I, you know, wanna wear the pink lipstick, or like, the *pink* lipstick? Play nice or face the wrath of the Goddess of Toothless Bunnies." -Twilight "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." -Confucius "We never say, 'Who's gonna get this?' We always say, 'The *right* people will get this.'" -Joel Hodgson, creator of MST3K "If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be research." -James Robinson "...and if that is one's belief, again, so be it. My point is that reality gives a flying rat's ass about what humanity does and doesn't believe." -John Goff "The difficult we do today. The impossible is over in R&D." -A. "I awoke the next morning wearing a large rhinestone necklace and little else, and in bed with a rather attractive hat. Much better outcome than a few previous New Years'." -Lady Bathory "'Goth' comes from the visigothic word 'Goth' meaning 'goth' and also, peversely enough, meaning 'God' - go figure." -Count Von Sexbat "Family: Can't live with 'em, and I do believe the Geneva Convention mentions something about the use of nuclear weapons." -Petro "Revolution and War are not murder unless you lose. This is a basic tenet of civilization." -Jim Choate "You have beautiful eyes. *crinkle of fists being made* May I have them?" -Jealousy "Your butter-knife wit astounds me. Hie thee to a whetstone." -Lady Bathory "I see any attempt at humour that goes beyond a pie in the face is lost on you. Pity. I'd welcome you to Usenet, pup, but I'd rather introduce you to my killfile. " -Lady Bathory "If/when I visit America, I will go and fire a gun somewhere, though. Just as a touristy thing to do. 'When in Rome,' and so on." -David Gerard "Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means of going backwards." -Aldous Huxley "Hockey just is gothic... cold, but people are still bumping into each other, people cheer when someone bleeds...." -Jennifer Knipper (oddlystrange) "Computer memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it." -Seymore Cray "A man may fight for many things... his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child.... But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn." -Black-Adder III "One thing got me rolling though. They told parents some 'warning signs' that their children were getting into 'vampirism.' The first was 'wearing unusual clothes.' (!!) The last was 'drinking blood.'" -Eric "We're not freaks, we're just visionaries." -David (DrX) "Tarik, if I were there right now, I'd hit you over the head with a big, huge trout!" -Jessica Warth "I don't want more choice; I just want nicer things." -Edina Monsoon, "AbFab" "AOL is an on-line service, with a slick package. They make it so easy to use that a semi-trained monkey could do it... and consequently, zillions of monkeys DO. Looking back, I think we should have charged triple the setup fee to anyone that was remotely suspected of being from AOL, because they ate us alive with tech support calls. 9 out of 10 of them were incapable of more cognitive effort than that required to salivate at the sound of the feeding bell. We found out that if you are real stupid, and quite strong, you can fit TWO disks in a Mac floppy drive... An ex-AOL user taught us the trick." -Ron Butcher (Ming) "'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes." -Timothy Leary "If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it." -from ST6: TUC "Just because I'm showing somebody being disemboweled doesn't mean that I have to get heavy and put a message behind it." -George Romero "Ignorance is only 'bliss' to those who don't require evidence for their beliefs. To those of us who DO want evidence, ignorance is the enemy." -Dan Bongard "Jesus loves you just the way you are. Cthulhu thinks you need some barbecue sauce." -A. "Tell them that sending the boy off to military school is probably going to make him even more weird than he is now. I mean have you ever sat down and talked to a Goth who knew how to use a gun?" -William Isenhour (TSM) "Imagine it: A clan of Goths decked out with semi-automatic rifles, roaming the streets, killing people whom we feel are doing stupid things. Passer-by: 'What the hell did you do that for?' Goth w/gun: 'Gene pool police, ma'am. Just protecting the future.'" -Julie Eisenhardt (Nexus) "I have a plan so cunning, you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel." -The Black Adder "I have a plan so cunning, you could brush yout teeth with it." -Black-Adder II "That is almost the stupidest thing I ever heard, the ABSOLUTE stupidest, of course, being Willie Nelson." -Tim McGaughy "Bah. Internet singles columns are for the truly desperate. No, I'm not disparaging those people who have found happiness over the 'net - it's possible - though I wager more through things like communication that turns into something else than through an ad that reads, 'Lothar, Vampire Stud, looking for submissive wench to call his own.'" -Jeff-boy (Canticle) "Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)" -Jonathon M. Robison "You should get in touch with the woman inside yourself. She'll tell what went wrong and where and how to avoid it again. 'Course, she could be lying." -David Benson "Me! Meeee!!! " -Michelle "I used to be a big believer in gun control, just because I live next to a country where more people get shot in a holiday weekend than most other countries see in a year. But I've read some stuff recently about other countries where the percentage of privately-owned guns is higher than the US, and they don't have *nearly* the crime problems. So now I don't think I believe in gun control any more -- I just believe that Americans shouldn't be allowed to have them." -Siobhan NiLoughlin, Canadian "I guess killing the guy then and there with a frozen chicken leg would have been a bad idea, huh?" -Jeff-boy (Canticle) "True, I have observed the life down here long and carefully enough, but the world is full of diversity and is never wanting in painful suprises." -Franz Kafka, "The Burrow" "All this cheerleader talk has me so excited. Shall we work up some routines for Convergence? 'All right people, on three take your boots and stomp the redneck's face in. 1..2..3. Good job, now clean the flesh off the boots and touch up that eyeliner.'" -Zoe O'Reilly "When will society finally get the message... we're nice, we're cuddly, you CAN invite us to dinner without us shooting smack or holding a Satanic ritual in your garden and sacrificing the family platypus." -T.R. Fosdick "I eat hardcore kids in my breakfast cereal... they go well with the marshmallows." -Victoria Gwaed "I don't really care if they are gothic or not, but do they have to wear those goddamn baseball caps?" -Ron Butcher (Ming) "I found out later that out of 180 that I graduated with, approximately 91% are now practicing lawyers." "Proof that Catholic schools don't teach morality." -Ruth Skowron & Chris Petro "The turning point for me, I think, was when my maths teacher, Mr. Lewis, spent twenty minutes of class time explaining to me why I no longer deserved to live... at first I was shocked, but then I realised he was correct. If I had no appreciation for the power of Taylor series, what right did I have to live? My life was worthless." -Matt Holliman "I've scraped things off my boots that mattered more to me, and paid them more attention if only because it took some slight bit of effort to get rid of them." -Jeff-boy (Canticle) "C-ko, 'r|v3+h3@d' (See? I'm industrial by subverting English! what ever.)" -Sara (C-ko) Linde "Scott became famous for freezing to death in Antarctica Columbus made history by thinking some island was India General Custer's a national hero for not knowing when to run All of these people are famous and they're also very dumb. History is made by stupid people." -A. "I have always felt that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept." -The Marquis de Carabas "If we know the mechanism behind death, and we know why it is that we've inherited mortality, we can start to think about taking steps to do something about it. Mortality is ultimately an engineering problem." -Jeff Dee "I'm almost fifty, and I still call my father 'Dad.' Sure, he prefers 'Betty,' but that's another story." -"Dr." Jonathan Katz "Can I just say that the wind chill in Chicago is -30?! Yes, that lump of pink ice is my figuratively frozen-off balls." -Lady Bathory "Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls for maintaining optimum customer satifaction; and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary items." -memo to IBM Field Engineers regarding mouse ball replacement "If these guys get any more soul, we'll have to order out for greens." -Joel Robinson {MST3K} "Well, it is said, Percy, that the civilized man seeks out good and intelligent company, so through learned discourse he may rise above the savage and closer to God. Personally, however, I like to start the day out with a total dickhead, to remind me I'm better." -Black-Adder II "I happen to have a copy of the lost 'Stormtrooper poetry recital' scene from Empire Strikes Back. Maybe they put it back in now that Lucas has the technology to do it right." -Kirt Dankmyer "To our 'primitive' ancestors, the force of evil was not something against God, but a necessary primal force of Nature -- the black, dreadful survival- of-the-fittest part of existence that goes beyond the platitudes of the Love Gods of simpletons and makes life vital instead of dead and unchanging. The 'evil' of competition creates mutation and upward evoulution. Death makes you get off your ass." -The Book of the SubGenius "Well, I do believe it, and I don't. This, I believe, is the Path to Slack... although I doubt that seriously." -Dr. Philo Drummond (The OverMan) "There's more than one way to skin a cat, but only half of them are fun." -Trisha Noffsinger "Don't just EAT a hamburger... eat the HELL out of it." -Dobbs 9-9-59 "Well, I know some Beta-Riticulans (Greys) that think that being Gothic is more than just black clothing and music -- for them, it includes cloning and anal probes." -Kirt Dankmyer "Since you can't read, understand the deeper meaning of my middle finger." -Ren "I'm convinced that the 'Abandon Hope...' inscription over the entrance to Hell is a long, centered stream of blinking text in that insanely ugly font whose lowercase letters are half the height of the uppercase." -Lazlo Nibble "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates, 1981 "Incidentally, my definition of snowboarding is careening down the slopes at 60 mph while Flapping my arms animatedly at a Random Fashion (not unlike doing the Peter Murphy Chicken Dance), Screaming, to the Untrained Ear, something like 'AAAAHHHHhhhhhhhhhh....'" -Ruben Chew "Listen, sister; if I want your opinion, I'll read it in your entrails." -Elvira "'So what,' I hear some of you say, 'I'll just make sure that the page won't display if they aren't using a JavaScript-aware browser.' While you're at it, why don't you do something else silly, like go to work naked, or start a 'Make Money Fast' scheme on Usenet?" -Kirk Friggstad "What? Me? Bitter? Nah. Me being bitter would be like me being sarcastic." -Aaron Pavao "Oh, and did anybody see that one on the TV where Bob Dole, wearing mascara and black lipstick, told about opening a chain of piercing salons at all major cities? Sorry, wrong reality." -Sir Hoo "If at first you don't succeed, you really should give up skydiving." -Ned Brickley "For example, NetScrape 3 take 50megs of RAM, dual 132MHz PowerPC 604e processors, 100megs of HD space, System 8 (Copland), not to mention the T3! And don't even think about NetScrape 4, which requires a quite large kitchen sink. That was hyperbole for anyone who has not figured out yet!" -DeRobertis "If you're going to be derisive and sarcastic, you might want to be sure you've paid attention enough not to end up looking silly." -Ann Navarro "Very little crime in my area; I walk home from the El shitfaced at 4AM and am unafraid (well, of course not, but you get the idea)." -Rachel Pollock (Lady Bathory)