A Tribute to abra a collection of her comments

[Fudi]

"Materialism is a circumference without a center. Idealism is a center without a circumference."
— Augustus William Hare


montyb
May 21, 2012, 3:43 pm
Dang geometry.
LLapp
November 29, 2014, 9:31 pm
Sounds like a stoned insight.
SwampySox
September 29, 2016, 7:50 am
Waaay deeeep....
maradnu
January 9, 2017, 2:00 pm
All this circumferating is making me dizzy.
jimdgar
February 16, 2017, 11:21 am
I though doughnuts were a circumference without a center. Maybe that's my problem.
CCCookie
May 19, 2018, 5:23 am
Ii wonder what he was smoking when he produced this quote. It's totally illogical to me -- a circumference, by definition, is around something and that something HAS a center. And thinking that idealism extends to infinity in all directions is pretty foolish. It can easily go too far, at least in the opinions of others, but it does have limits. Most people, but definitely not all, will lose their pacifism if all that they hold near and dear is threatened, for instance. There are other examples, of course.
DrCryptell
July 22, 2018, 9:51 am
...and a triangle is a square looking for a shortcut; an ellipse is a circle that ate too many hot dogs.
blueladyblue
April 30, 2019, 4:30 pm
...and a circle is a square that lost its edge. A square is a nerdy circle. An octagon is a stop sign that hasn't been painted yet. And are materialism and idealsm really opposites?
Synonymous
July 14, 2020, 7:56 pm
...Like a circle in a spiral and a wheel within a wheel...
badbob
August 4, 2020, 7:59 am
maybe a circular firing squad was in order
LLapp
October 7, 2020, 1:48 am
Blueladyblue's comment reminded me of my favorite Craigslist ad. Somebody was selling an old octagonal end table/cabinet, and the only text in the ad was "Great for storing stop signs."
abra
July 19, 2022, 2:56 am
^ I had one of those I handed it down to my son who handed it down to a friend. Now I have no place for my stop signs. Actually, that table was where I stored my treasure trove of newspaper cryptograms.

[LLapp]

"Humor's a weapon if you want to make it one." — Bob Newhart

abra
September 22, 2021, 6:33 pm
I remember when my son discovered Bob Newhart from an album we had. The other day he called and said that our older grandson was listening to the one about the airline and screen door company. I said ''the torch has been passed to a new generation''. Proud Nana.

[LLapp]

^^^^ That one is just wonderful. Thanks, Toeprint.

[Toeprint]

"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem."
— Saul Steinberg


puffybob
December 7, 2011, 4:48 pm
Give me a break.
fredsevent
February 22, 2012, 11:00 pm
Okay - puffybob. Take five!
Lurker
August 1, 2012, 10:35 pm
No, it's about hand-eye coordination.
bazinga
November 20, 2012, 2:09 pm
It is about spitting and making gestures with your hands.
Allen
July 2, 2013, 3:36 pm
Baseball is 20 minutes of action, packed into 4 hours!
skeeter
March 5, 2015, 9:31 am
All that and peanuts and hot dogs, too.
abra
March 28, 2016, 2:19 pm
It's about never giving up hope. It's about starting each season woefully naive and thinking there's a chance. It's about watching them throw away their chances in the playoffs and saying "wait'll next year:" Well that's what it's like if you're a Cub fan.
Barnabas
October 17, 2016, 8:47 am
Maybe not this year, abra. Cubs and Dodgers series tied 1-1 in the NLCS. Lifelong Twins fan here, but in 2016... Go Cubs!
abra
October 22, 2016, 7:25 am
I must have had the winter is too long blues up there. OMgosh, yes!! Go my Cubbies Go. And let me say that 86 years are nothing. LOL Try 108. And 71 without a Pennant. Tonight we try to get past Kershaw. I think we can do that, but if we can't we've got another shot on Sunday. There's alway THIS year.
mmfs83
March 9, 2017, 5:58 am
And they did it abra!!!
abra
April 25, 2018, 6:12 pm
While we were living!

[LLapp]

"This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs." — Marcus Aurelius

Barnabas
February 20, 2012, 3:43 pm
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

joed
January 22, 2013, 2:47 pm
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

jnoodles
May 26, 2013, 1:48 am
Have fun storming the castle!

wvwoman
March 31, 2014, 8:40 pm
ah, the princess bride--my favorite, joed!

LLapp
July 9, 2015, 12:07 pm
Ah, the part which governs. Did he mean his brain?

marnita
July 21, 2015, 1:45 pm
We can hope so.

abra
November 6, 2015, 3:04 pm
joed, are you my son? LOL. He loves that quote. Did you see, they used it on Big Bang, a couple of weeks ago?

LLapp
April 21, 2018, 9:38 pm
abra, I think our sons have a lot in common. Did yours used to drag a whole bag of books with him on every family trip too?

abra
November 13, 2018, 2:22 pm
He definitely did.

imsoeasy
May 8, 2019, 4:01 am
For a second I had an f in the part that governs.

Eureka
February 21, 2020, 8:17 pm
I'm just going to open the window.

[Fudi]

More on happiness, from abra:

"The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it."
— Al Batt


martayela
December 11, 2012, 12:02 am
i like this quote....think about it!!!!
locodad
January 3, 2013, 4:27 pm
is it our fault that you are happy? now that's making me cry
jnoodles
May 10, 2013, 11:10 pm
So few people I know are happy. Nor am I. I'll wait for them to make the first move. Yeah, this should work.
Quizzical
March 15, 2014, 11:33 am
Noodles, you really need to meet some different people. Then try to cheer them up. It's contagious.
Andy451
June 20, 2015, 12:09 pm
Thank you Al Batt! You're the reason all seven billion people on earth, three polar bears, one cheetah, four dragonflies, and sixteen lemurs at The City Park Zoo are so f&%((**&^ng happy. It's you. No, it's you. No, it's you.
Elephino
April 23, 2021, 3:26 pm
lemurs make me happy
abra
January 30, 2022, 8:46 pm
I'm happy. It's getting harder and harder to avoid the rocks and rivers of unhappiness, but mostly I manage. Some of you are the cause of some of my happiness. You are. You really, really are, believe me. I couldn't be so happy without you, and Sammy Smiles, Arthur Helps and the rest of the gang.

-------------------------------
And from me, I sort of wish their family name, rather than Henry, had been some verb [like Delights, or something], so that she could have given her son one of those complete-sentence names she loved. I have a friend from college who gave her son, as a first name, her own maiden name, which was Brighton. I wanted her to give him a middle name of Handsome, but she wouldn't listen to me. What a missed opportunity! Abra and I were kindred spirits in our shared amusement about certain names.

[hrossa]

"Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination." — Immanuel Kant

Kant's portrait on puzzlebaron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanu..._portrait).jpg

JD_1947
November 13, 2014, 9:53 am
I imagine he was happy with that one . . .

LLapp
March 16, 2016, 5:14 pm
I wonder what the right half of his face looked like.

abra
July 2, 2018, 6:18 pm
It was dark, very, very dark.

[hrossa]

"Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top." — Robert Burton

abra
May 5, 2012, 2:54 pm
"dogs in a wheel' ?

abra
September 18, 2012, 8:07 pm
I still say "dogs in a wheel"?

Lurker
November 14, 2012, 6:42 pm
Who's chaining up squirrels?

vivian1874
January 19, 2013, 12:02 am
they probably weren't ambitious enough.

montyb
June 2, 2013, 4:02 am
I'd say you would have to be darned ambitious to try to chain squirrels. (Dogs in a wheel???)

momof7
November 8, 2014, 6:23 pm
I picture hamsters, but maybe there are big wheels for dogs.

abra
November 16, 2014, 2:57 pm
And for that matter -, squirrels in a chain?

[LLapp]

"Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities." — Frank Lloyd Wright

abra on 2014-11-02 14:25:36
Just give him a box of Godivas, a bottle of Dom Perignon, and some four ply tissue and let him sit in a vacant lot.

[LLapp]

Go Cubs Go....


"A plan is just a tangent vector on the manifold of reality." — Scratch Garrison

abra
September 13, 2014, 2:59 pm
I'm shocked that I got this one, more shocked that I ended up (just barely) in the average column.
abra
December 22, 2014, 6:15 am
Ha! This time I'm right on the line. "Half-Fast".
LLapp
May 13, 2016, 11:18 am
abra, you are not half-ast!
abra
October 23, 2016, 9:41 am
This time I'm watching the replay of the Cubs game, you know when they became the NL champions. I'm putting that in there for posterity. Anyway, I didn't realize I'd stopped so long to watch and I got 447 seconds. Oops.

****************


"He who lets the goat be laid on his shoulders is soon after forced to carry the cow." — Italian Proverb

abra
January 20, 2017, 6:31 pm
If it's a Billy Goat that's been laid on your shoulders, better send for Theo Epstein. Just sayin'.

oddcouple
June 27, 2017, 12:22 am
To elaborate on abra's comment, Theo Epstein was the general manager of the Red Sox who put together the team that won the World Series in 2004 breaking an 86 year championship drought. They broke the curse of the Billy Goat.

spacecoyote1966
September 28, 2017, 8:13 am
Actually the Billy Goat curse was on the Cubs. The Red Sox had the Bambino Curse.

abra
October 23, 2017, 6:22 pm
Yes, the Billy Goat's Curse was on the Cubs. Who broke a 108 year drought and won the 2016 World Series. Theo broke both curses.

LLapp
March 8, 2018, 8:48 am
He's an exorcist!

blueladyblue
May 31, 2018, 8:04 am
So if you break the curse of the Billy Goat do you then get the cow? Do you have to carry it? Poor shoulders.

abra
June 28, 2018, 7:25 am
Cubs might be carrying around a cow this year. That could explain some things.

*****************


"What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" — Adam Smith

abra
May 30, 2019, 2:23 am
True love and a puppy, and an 80'' TV. He'd probably be wanting to watch the Cubs win the World Series on that TV.

*****************

"Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same width." — Bill Veeck

abra
April 18, 2022, 2:03 am
Depending on how picky you want to be about truth or myth, and which story you want to believe, Bill Veeck is responsible for the hallowed ivy at Wrigley Field. I'm even down with the story that he planted it himself.

[LLapp]

[Abridged thread, focusing mainly on abra's part...]

"Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, and carefree mistrust are signs of health — everything unconditional belongs in pathology." — Friedrich Nietzsche

ronasid
September 18, 2015, 7:27 am
Friedrich, I mustache you a question... why are your quotations always so dark. How could you be so serious when all you had to do was look in the mirror and burst out laughing?

abra
November 1, 2017, 9:49 am
ronasid, I agree with you, except for this: "We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh." and... "He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." He had a lot to say about dancing. It seems so un-Nietzsche-like. The Dancing Nietzsche, might have been quite likable.

abra
January 20, 2021, 2:44 am
Oh, Ronasid, I forgot to say how clever I thought ''I mustache you'' was.

[LLapp]

"Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster." — George Eliot

abra
September 18, 2013, 2:59 pm
Is she talking about not having maternal feelings? That's what it made me think.

universalmom
January 19, 2014, 2:49 pm
Right abra, probably if a woman didn't want to get married and have kids, she was a monster.

abra
December 23, 2015, 11:06 am
it's far better for a woman who doesn't want children not to have them. There's nothing monstrous about it.

SippyGurl
December 1, 2016, 6:22 am
pfft, for some reason i started at the end and came up with mobster - after dismissing lobster

abra
July 10, 2017, 10:53 am
It's terrible when a woman is turned into a lobster, just because she doesn't want children.

[Nitefly5150]

"If you love Barry Manilow, you're gonna love the Insane Clown Posse. Love them. They're exactly... well, they're not exactly alike, but they're a little bit alike." — Zach Galifianakis

abra
November 8, 2021, 2:22 am
Blush, I'm a Fanilow.

This is Abra's son. At the time she passed, for the most part, I thought "I'll save this for later". That turned out to be this week, so thank you all.

I live closer to Raleigh than Mom did, and I know a lot of people who went to NC State. People around here love ZG, he went to NCSU, and is from somewhere in NC. I .... Do not understand the attraction to Mr GalifImnotgoingtospellhisnamerihtsinceicantcopyfro mtheir.

But we sent Mom to see Barry. Twice I think my dad was just as excited as she was.

Also, I think Mom's quote about how Andy Warhol must have understood about the soup is her best line.

[Toeprint]

"I've been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out."
— Lee Grant

abra
March 28, 2013, 11:30 pm
coulda/woulda

gryhnd51
July 12, 2014, 6:35 pm
Hah! Must be I married the perfect "pacifist" as he ALWAYS takes care of the garbage. In 35 yrs plus, I've never had to ask even once.

abra
May 3, 2015, 9:06 am
My husband always takes out the garbage too. He also empties the dishwasher, usually a team effort, and (high praise) he replaces the bathroom tissue. Just a few of the reasons, that I've kept him for 47 years this month.

marnita
June 21, 2015, 10:59 am
My husband takes out the garbage, does the laundry, cooks wonderful meals, paints the house, grow vegetables and flowers and mows the lawn. I do the vacuuming, scrub the bathrooms, handle the finances/bills/taxes, wash the dishes and take care of the cat litter. This division of labor has worked well for us for over 30 years.

cherylab1963
November 28, 2016, 6:31 pm
abra and marnita...kudos to your husbands. My dad was like that for my mother. They were married for 61 years when she died. Selfless, humble men like that are very rare indeed. It's one reason I've never married. Dad is a tough act to follow. Men today just won't step up.

abra
March 19, 2017, 1:53 pm
Kiss some more frogs, cherylab. There are good guys out there.

gryhnd51
March 1, 2018, 6:31 pm
Amazingly, Lee Grant is still alive at the age of 92! I remember clearly what a beautiful and gracious woman she was. Too bad to have had two awful husbands.

abra
February 22, 2022, 9:24 pm
Here daughter Dinah Manoff was on Empty Nest, many years ago. I'm not sure what else she's done. She looked a lot like her mother.

[Toeprint]

"It's sad that, in our blindness we gather thorns for flowers "
— Unattributed

abra
June 24, 2020, 10:46 pm
He reveals a lot but maybe some of them are red herrings. Never fear we're on the case.

---

"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."
— Frank Herbert

abra
October 19, 2019, 6:57 pm
I loved Stranger in a Strange Land. I haven't read it for years, but I read it many times when I was young. I've read The Martian Chronicles too. Andy's at his best when he's discussing books and authors.

---

"If you love Barry Manilow, you're gonna love the Insane Clown Posse. Love them. They're exactly... well, they're not exactly alike, but they're a little bit alike."
— Zach Galifianakis

abra
November 8, 2021, 2:22 am
Blush, I'm a Fanilow.

---

"It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not."
— W.C. Sellar

abra
August 17, 2015, 3:16 pm
I'm not a garden person. There are all sorts of creepy-crawlies out there.

LLapp
November 25, 2015, 4:43 pm
Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt. That's why I like vegetables, you know what you're about.

abra
April 24, 2016, 6:50 pm
I guess I'm playing by W.C.'s rules. I don't plant a garden, so I don't have to love it.

LLapp
April 3, 2017, 12:36 pm
I spent this afternoon getting the Rose of Sharon bushes under control, and it was downright exhilarating.

MamaB
May 7, 2017, 3:09 am
We planted corn and carrots yesterday before a rain!

Lurker
November 1, 2017, 10:46 am
I planted all my winter greens last week. The radishes are already coming up. Gardening is like having a pet. You go visit the plants to see how they're doing.

MamaB
November 24, 2017, 1:34 am
The corn did well. The carrots and late potatoes not so much. Gotta find out what roots crops want that we don't have.

marnita
January 5, 2018, 2:10 pm
It is disheartening, when you have lovingly tended a row of vegetables, to come home one day and find that a woodchuck has reduced them to stubble.

NotTooOld
January 20, 2018, 2:23 am
My mother loves to garden. My contribution? I sit out there with her and read out loud.

bees
March 5, 2018, 12:26 pm
The most expensive food in the world has been grown in backyards around the world.

abra
July 16, 2018, 12:32 pm
That has been true for me when I tried to grow tomatoes, bees.