Classic Comments on the Quote

[LLapp]

Another entry (with line breaks added) from the Kb83 Limerick Series....

"Perhaps the strangest thing of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes." — Eric T. Bell

LLapp
October 8, 2014, 7:53 am
Apes can do simple arithmetic.

Roxanne
December 13, 2015, 7:59 am
For all we know they are capable of doing complex mathematics also, they just don't get the NSF grants that would enable them to spend time preparing their research for publication.

kb83
April 9, 2018, 10:29 am
A brilliant chimpanzee named Walaji
Knew well algebraic topology
He made a fine model
Of a plant-based Klein bottle
Then ate it without an apology.

[LLapp]

Players' tips and nostalgia about where to get the best and worst pizza....


"You can't go wrong with pizza, unless it's terrible pizza." — Andy Kindler

oddcouple
August 11, 2018, 12:40 pm
I've grown fond of deep dish pizza. Unfortunately, frozen tastes little different than cardboard.

kb83
November 7, 2018, 10:14 am
Very logical.

abra
June 4, 2019, 5:51 pm
It's very subjective. Even though I'm from the Chicago burbs, I don't like deep-dish. We both like very thin crust almost no sauce, Italian sausage and cheese. It should smell like olive oil and oregano. Hard to find in a lot of places in the country. Also, Italian beef, I can't believe that it's mostly a local Chicago thing. I know it's spreading, but I was shocked that we haven't found it in NY, CT or MA. We did have a place not too far from here with Italian beef and sausage, but it only lasted a year or so. My son found another one but it's too far for us to drive for lunch. My niece who calls herself a ''beef snob'' is going through withdrawal since her move to Florida. I guess there are some chain places, but she said she wouldn't eat there when she lived in Chicago.

Eureka
July 20, 2019, 12:15 pm
It is hard to find really good pizza these days.

LLapp
October 3, 2019, 5:42 am
Best pizza I ever had was at the lunch counter at the train station in Florence. Huge brick oven, just for the pizza. In a train station!!

letfreedomring
October 31, 2019, 5:25 pm
It's great to have a great food experience when traveling. I had the best mussels in Nice many years ago. I remember going back by train (from Monte Carlo) the next day to have them again. But I cannot get a good cheesesteak anywhere but Dalessandro's, Philadelphia.

montyb
December 6, 2019, 11:27 pm
Worst pizza I’ve ever had was from the snack window at Sam’s Club. It made Chuck E Cheese’s seem like gastronomic ecstasy by comparison.

imsoeasy
January 12, 2020, 5:57 am
Word is Monty, that you should get your pizza slices at Costco. With over 700 calories a slice plus 30 grams of fat (65% saturated) they are guaranteed to delight your taste buds and harden your arteries.

maradnu
March 23, 2020, 12:16 am
Worst pizza I ever had was in the late 60s at a small restaurant in NC. The crust was burnt, the sauce was bitter and they used American cheese.

LLapp
February 25, 2021, 2:43 am
Letfreedomring, the *other* best pizza I ever had was in Monte Carlo! But cheesesteaks -- Delasandro's on Henry Ave.? Really?! Thanks for the tip! My daughter and her boyfriend love finding great cheesesteaks whenever they visit Philadelphia. I'll take them there someday after the pandemic is behind us.

Synonymous
August 15, 2021, 6:40 pm
Gaspare's Pizza, San Francisco, Geary Blvd. Best in the West.

rasbury
August 23, 2021, 1:31 pm
So the quote is basically saying, pizza is always good, except when it's bad. That fits in pretty well with my own experience.

gracefulghost
December 19, 2021, 8:37 am
B & J's Pizza is the best in Corpus Christi and has been for several years! Now they're a brew pub, too! Heaven!

didit
December 19, 2021, 2:58 pm
Al Quadrante near the Marco Polo Airport outside of Venice. Even years later, my husband would ask, "Remember that pizza?"

[LLapp]

I can't stop laughing at imsoeasy's comeback.

"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get Up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office." — Robert Frost

kb83
April 3, 2014, 5:15 am
very funny. I didn't know he had an office.

tskaggs6
October 23, 2014, 6:42 pm
Yeah, I don't see him as the office type. Sounds like some kind of snark where he's pointing out what a special snowflake he is compared to the rest of us. Like his poetry though.

dovid1946
January 5, 2015, 9:36 am
His poetry office was in room 421 , down the hall from the prose division

LLapp
September 1, 2015, 11:40 am
^ ha ha . . . but really, a writer has an office. Think about it: It's full-time, you need a desk and a chair and something to write with, and you need solitude for long stretches. Office, right?

abra
June 27, 2016, 1:43 pm
Ha! I was wondering if he went to the office each morning. Did he take the train, and stop at Walgreens for coffee? Did he have a secretary taking messages about important poetry matters? I would have guessed it would be more like LLapp described it. Put on your slippers and walk down the hall.

LLapp
May 13, 2018, 5:28 am
Truman Capote wrote best in hotel rooms and trains. John Cheever put on his only suit every morning and rode the elevator down to the basement of his NYC apartment house; there he would strip down to his boxers and hang up his suit, then sit down and write until nightfall, put his suit back on, and ride the elevator home. And there was some writer, I can't remember who it was, who said she would write with her feet immersed in a bucket of water, as a tactic to keep herself at her desk.

imsoeasy
November 5, 2019, 12:59 am
I didn't know it was so easy to be a writer. I'm doing it now sitting in the dank basement, naked, with my feet in a bucket of water. Anyone else have tips?

[LLapp]

Maybe we need a special forum thread just for players' spontaneous poetry. Till then, here's another limerick from kb83.


"Forgive many things in others - nothing in yourself." — Ausonius

kb83
January 12, 2022, 9:03 pm
Decimius Magnus Ausonius
Had the key to existence harmonious,
Grant others their flaws,
But in your case, pause,
You could be the one who's erroneous.

[Eureka]

(Sometimes darkyr has the ability to bring everything together so magnificently.)


"Seven beers followed by two Scotches and a thimble of marijuana and it's funny how sleep comes all on its own." — David Sedaris


kb77
October 20, 2011, 4:21 pm
and its all safer than rx.


gryhnd51
February 26, 2013, 1:22 am
I wouldn't say that 7 beers, 2 scotches and a few hits of pot is exactly SAFE.....nor smart.


universalmom
June 13, 2014, 6:35 am
This guy is so full of himself...


chopstix
August 10, 2014, 7:06 pm
The thimble full alone should do the trick.., and I think David Sedaris is hilarious!


echo
August 12, 2014, 11:38 am
I agree with chopstix, he IS hilarious! "Me talk pretty one day" is one of my all-time faves.


obsessedreader8
August 23, 2015, 9:52 am
I don't find this guy funny at all.


tgreen517
October 27, 2015, 6:46 pm
I guess you have to have a good sense of humor.


mikeoc51
February 8, 2019, 8:27 am
where s the rum


djgoossen
December 7, 2019, 9:01 pm
Not a good sense of humor, just an indiscriminate one. I've seen David Sedaris schtick. Mundane or pedestrian is how I would describe it.


Wordigo
June 27, 2020, 10:09 pm
Some people have their funny bone where beer, scotch and pot are. Other people, where sex is. Others yet, where shit is. Yet others where ethnicity is. All this shows that humor is an excellent psychological x ray device.


mohamm1
September 19, 2020, 3:26 pm
^ What Wordigo said. The things people think are funny, and the things they are offended by, are very revealing of what's going on inside them. #AllMindsMatter - - - 145


darkyr
December 9, 2020, 4:13 pm
Two funny bones walk into a bar and order seven beers, two scotches and a thimble full of marijuana. I'll let everyone fill in the rest of the joke in the privacy of their own imaginations, but let me just say it involves a psychological X-ray device.

[montyb]

One of the great pleasures of this thread is when the community of crytogrammers take someone's comment and just run with it. It's like handing off the baton in a relay race; it takes a team. (Slightly edited to remove a time posting.)

"What you THINK about reveals what you ARE. Sometimes we need to do a check-up from the neck-up. "
— Unattributed

montyb
February 27, 2013, 10:25 pm
I was just thinking about thie vacuousness of the universe.

jnoodles
May 9, 2013, 7:44 pm
Sex......stil sex .......sex. Perhaps I should check lower.

universalmom
September 6, 2014, 2:39 pm
hey! did you just call me vacuous??

abra
January 1, 2015, 11:05 am
There's a billboard, not far from here, that uses the "check-up from the neck up" line it's from an ENT.

montyb
March 4, 2015, 12:14 pm
Hee hee! Thanks for the laughs, jnoodles and U-mom!

kb83
April 27, 2018, 2:50 am
No, U-mom, that would be abhorrent.

LLapp
December 7, 2020, 2:21 am
. . . because nature abhors a vacuum cleaner?

[montyb]

Ian123 brings it home!

"The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him."
— Russell Baker

opallady
June 24, 2011, 4:05 pm
It's a plot!

countessofmontecry
September 6, 2011, 5:41 pm
Just this morning a rug rolled up and tried to trip me.

WRQ9
May 29, 2013, 6:43 pm
Knee pads, a helmet and steel toed shoes, everyday.

puzzleme
June 1, 2013, 10:40 am
Especially computers!

momof7
October 27, 2013, 8:54 am
I never knew I was surrounded by such evil!!

fishbum
January 13, 2014, 8:32 am
And we made most of it!

locodad
March 24, 2014, 5:54 am
it sounds to me like a famous very funny with a cute innocent kid, Home Alone

universalmom
January 19, 2016, 11:37 am
So THAT's what my keys are up to!!

marnita
April 7, 2016, 7:34 am
Every now and then my bicycle decides to throw me on the ground.

Annamariah
May 15, 2016, 10:31 pm
I think my bed is trying to keep me as a prisoner and maybe slowly smother me. It's really hard to get out of it every morning.

Marboy
February 11, 2017, 4:14 pm
I have a coffee table that carries out random attacks if I walk through the lounge without turning on the light.

seastar228
July 26, 2017, 7:47 pm
I saw a rug throw a woman to the floor just a few days ago.

MamaB
August 31, 2017, 7:15 am
The leg of the bed frame reaches out and attacks my little toe.

writeon
September 5, 2017, 12:17 am
My carpet uses its electric powers and shocks me when I turn on the light switch.

Persephone59
May 6, 2018, 1:08 am
A few years ago, I was taking some things downstairs; my arms were full. When I got to the bottom, the bottom step VANISHED, and I stumbled hard and twisted my knee. It's never been the same. And I will never trust those stairs again.

LLapp
May 20, 2018, 1:51 pm
Woody Allen used to do a stand-up routine about all the appliances in his life conspiring against him, until finally he clobbered his television. Everything was fine again until he got on an elevator in an office building. It was the (then) new kind of elevator with an automated voice, that asked "What floor, please?" when you got in. He told it his floor, the doors closed, and the elevator went to his floor but then stopped without opening the doors. "Are you the guy who beat up the TV set?" the elevator asked him. He admitted he was, and the elevator dropped so fast to the basement that he had to crawl out. (I haven't listened to that routine in 30 years. Can't believe it's still in my memory.)

montyb
September 27, 2019, 8:53 pm
So that's why the Legos go for de feet.

Persephone59
November 15, 2019, 1:04 am
Oooh, a Lego in the middle of a bare foot in the dark..... that is REALLY painful.

rasbury
October 3, 2020, 8:35 pm
I drove my car into a brick wall, but it wasn't my fault - I honked first (In the Henny Youngman version it was his wife, but after all the quotes about accepting personal responsibility...)

SOLLUVVER
June 25, 2021, 10:20 am
MY RECLINER IS MAKING ME FAT!

Ian123
November 7, 2021, 12:34 pm
Then stop eating it !

[Eureka]

"My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers." — Tom Stoppard


momof7
January 23, 2013, 3:52 am
You sure Alex Trebek didn't say this?

[LLapp]

"In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it." — Epictetus

imsoeasy
December 23, 2018, 4:44 pm
The wooing, the logistics, the angry spouse.

LLapp
October 11, 2020, 9:14 pm
Imsoeasy wrote a novel in 7 words.

[hrossa]

"Husbands are awkward things to deal with, even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender." — Mary Lorraine Buckley

oddcouple
December 6, 2014, 9:17 am
especially keeping them in hot water.

montyb
July 2, 2015, 3:29 pm
I'm awkward enough without hot water, thank you.

abra
October 16, 2015, 3:48 pm
Oh Mary, if your speaking just from your own experience, maybe you have the wrong husband.

marnita
July 20, 2016, 5:11 am
Maybe he just needs to be grilled now and then.

[LLapp]

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others." — Confucius

Allen
August 5, 2013, 12:49 pm
After all, if you can't teach others, whom can you teach?

Quizzical
July 22, 2014, 3:47 pm
Way to go Allen. I like it when we can point out the superfluity of pompous sounding platitudes.

BriddlesBob
April 12, 2016, 4:08 am
whew! where's my lexicon?

blueladyblue
December 27, 2017, 9:38 am
Here it is, Bob. You left in the garageicon.

darkyr
August 6, 2018, 4:46 am
Yes, right next to my automicon.

Majka
December 6, 2019, 10:15 pm
I have noticed that a vast majority of these comments are derogatory of the quote, the person quoted or the person's appearance.

LLapp
February 5, 2021, 4:12 am
They're called cheap shots, Majka. Wisecracking. The great American pastime.

Ian123
March 10, 2021, 9:55 am
It's the only reason we are here.

hrossa
September 13, 2022, 5:17 pm
That, and the popcorn.

hrossa
March 24, 2023, 5:25 pm
Oh yeah, learning stuff, too.

[LLapp]

"Great doubts deep wisdom. Small doubts little wisdom." — Proverb

irisheyes
March 3, 2011, 5:23 pm
is the syntax supposed to be ambiguous? should there be commas after doubts in each sentence? or is doubt the verb? much to contemplate.

wvwoman
February 16, 2014, 4:20 am
yes, commas after "doubts" in both sentences.

LLapp
March 30, 2016, 9:40 am
Tarzan long time this one.

marnita
July 17, 2016, 11:42 am
Who needs verbs, anyway?

MamaB
April 30, 2018, 4:31 am
Try it with "great donuts."

MamaB
May 6, 2018, 3:02 am
I remembered it wasn't donuts!

DrCryptell
September 13, 2018, 2:43 pm
i have great doubts that the proverb is true.

318WOZ
May 24, 2019, 3:36 pm
New proverb good verb. Old proverb maybe verb. "Come on down to Mac's Proverbs, where we really put the 'verb' in 'proverb'!"

Anachronismatic
September 20, 2021, 3:29 pm
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

[hrossa]

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." — J. R. R. Tolkien

bansaisequoia
August 28, 2014, 3:10 pm
Some people don't like allegory or billeclintony.

wordfairy
November 13, 2014, 4:35 pm
Clever fellow, that bansai.

[LLapp]

"Free and fair discussion will ever be found the firmest friend to truth." — G. Campbell

wvwoman
August 26, 2012, 10:24 pm
alliteration abounds!

kb83
October 8, 2014, 1:11 pm
Who is G. Campbell? I'm thinking not Glenn Campbell, the country music singer.

kb83
March 30, 2015, 4:34 am
I still couldn't find G. Campbell-- I looked up Glen Campbell quotes, and this was not one of them. The syntax does make it sound like it is 19th century or earlier.

LLapp
May 14, 2015, 11:16 am
I googled the quote and found the source. The author is George Campbell, apparently a nineteenth-century Scottish Greek and Bible scholar. The quote is from his preface to the book dated 1837 with this title page: "The Four Gospels, translated from the Greek, with preliminary dissertations, and notes critical and explanatory. By Gary Campbell DD, Principal of Marischal College [in Aberdeen, Scotland], and one of the Ministers of Aberdeen." Here's the quote on the printed page: (link)

kb83
October 26, 2017, 4:57 am
Thanks, LLapp!

susanith
October 31, 2017, 7:23 am
1800s, Bible, Scotland. This statement is outright revolutionary in that context.

Wordigo
August 29, 2021, 8:11 pm
"Free and fair flour will forever be found the firmest friend to farfel." — Campbell Soup.

rasbury
March 4, 2023, 4:32 pm
"By the time I get to Phoenix, I will have a free and fair discussion, which will be a firm friend to truth, but will not sit gently on my mind" -- the other G. Campbell.

[hrossa]

So often when I see great a candidate for "Classic Comments", it's already here!