I turn 31 at about midday today, Monday April 2. This means I can no longer deny to myself that I am now in my late 20s. Well, perhaps my mid-20s.
If you are reading this, whether you actually know me personally or not, I request of you the traditional From the Morgue birthday gift – a quotation in the comments. Comment on this post with a quote from anywhere, about anything. It can be funny or wise or silly or sombre or nonsensical. Quote your bus ticket; quote the bible. Give me some words sourced in the world.
The birthday wisdom posts get more google traffic than any other part of this site. So think of future generations of googlers who will come here seeking enlightenment, and give them something to read. And for me too. Because it’s my birthday.
Birthday Wisdom 2004
Birthday Wisdom 2005
Birthday Wisdom 2006
57 thoughts on “Birthday Wisdom 2K7”
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Happy birthday big guy!
I’m glad you asked for a random quote – I heard this on the news last night and was just waiting for an excuse to share it somewhere…
“…because they are so different there is nothing the same about them.”
– a lady on 3 News commenting on three recent speedway accidents in recent months.
“We are gonna play Blue’s Clues
We are gonna play Blue’s Clues
We are gonna play Blue’s Clues
‘Cause it’s a really great game. Yeah!”
~ Steve from Blues Clues
“If the weather gets better we should get together
Spend a little time or we could do whatever
And if we get together we’d be twice as clever”
~ Jack Johnson
“You’re the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo
We’re not gonna sit in silence
We’re not gonna live with fear”
~ John Farnham
“There’s only us, there’s only this. Forget regret or life is yours to miss. No other path, no other way, no day but today.”
~ Mimi from ‘Rent’
“Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”
and “Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.”
~ Both Dorothy Parker
I was trying to think of something profound. Witty. Meaningful. Perhaps helpful.
…I got nothing. So, how about this one?
“Last night, at the Spider Club, Nicole Richie dragged me into the bathroom and fucked me.”
– Jason Mewes.
Not much wisdom, just some cool.
“You walked in, just like smoke”
-66, The Afghan Whigs
“We live on a mountain, right at the top,
There’s a beautiful view, from the top of the mountain.
Every morning I walk towards the edge,
and throw little things off.
Like carparts, bottles and cutlery.
Or whatever I find lying around.
Its become a habit, a way to start the day”
-Hyperballad, Bjork
“You wasted life why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife”
-The ocean breathes salty, Modest Mouse
“I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”
-Against the wind, Bob Seger.
“And all these things I tried to say,
were never easy to explain.
They were always meant for you.”
-Always for you, the Album Leaf
An in car conversation on the way to Christchurch a few weeks ago-
1. “Is that smoke up ahead?”
2. “Its the barbarian hordes, they’re burning Christchurch!”
3. “Bloody Vikings! Typical, you drive all day then turn up just as some buggars sacking the place.”
RNZAF spokesman- “The aircraft hit the ground in a vertical dive at high speed”
Journo- “Is it a write off then?”
-From an RNZAF press conference
Oh and,
“Fat bottomed girls, you make the rocking world go round!”
-Fat bottomed girls, Queen
Happy Birthday!
“There’s the rub,” as the actress said to the bishop.
Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
– “Cry out in your weakness”, Rumi
She said you can’t see anything
She said you can change anything
She said you can paint your sky any colour
Any colour it’s all up to you
And you can paint your dark as dark as you need
And you can paint your light as light as you please
It’s all up to you
– “She Said”, The God Machine
Seeing as you share your birthday with Hans Christian Andersen, I thought a few of his quotes might be appropriate.
“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.â€
“Just living is not enough… One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.â€
“Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.â€
“`But the Emperor has nothing on at all!’ said a little child.â€
Happy Birthday Big Guy!
I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something – a sculptor he would have been, no doubt – who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course, but the point I’m working round to is that there were a couple of lines that went, if I remember correctly:
She starts. She moves. She seems to feel
The stir of life along her keel.
And what I’m driving at is that you couldn’t get a better description of what happened to Gussie as I spoke those heartening words. His brow cleared, his eyes brightened, he lost that fishy look, and he gazed at the slug, which was still on the long, long trail, with something approaching bonhomie.
– PG Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves
“Your mama’s on the top of my things to do list”
– Butterfingers
Happy birthday dude!
[Turk is talking to a group of surgical interns. He is holding a list of patients.]
Turk: Right. This guy need some brain work, and this guy needs a new heart.
[J.D. looks over Turk’s shoulder. He points at another name on the list.]
J.D.: And this guy needs courage.
Turk: Helping or hurting, J.D.? Helping or hurting?
— Scrubs.
I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named “Sue.”
-Johnny Cash
You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
-Bob Hope (this one may apply to you?)
Happy Birthday.
I provide to you on this auspicious day, 3 quotes that always jump in to my mind when people ask for quotes. They are not especially profound and I don’t know why they float around in the old grey matter but oh well…;p
“Would you? Could you? With a goat?” – Dr Seuss
“I didn’t lose my mind, it was mine to give away” – Robbie Williams, No Regrets
“I can resist everything except temptation” – Oscar Wilde.
I will now quote myself, from the handiest piece of paper I have:
“Nice introduction, lots of details about the rules of hockey, largely read (not memorised).
TARGET: Practice your speech to up your fluency. Smaller cue cards. 2:30”
And Joseph Conrad (handiest book):
“It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror – of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath –
‘The horror! The horror!'”
or more pithily:
“‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.'”
Stand
In the end you’ll still be you
One that’s done all the things you set out to do
Stand
There’s a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you’re going anywhere
Stand
All the things you want are real
You have you to complete and there is no deal
Stand. stand, stand
Stand. stand, stand
Stand
Sly and the Family Stone “Stand”
Happy Birthday!
“Nobody tells me nuffink.”
– Sgt Turner, _Hot Fuzz_
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung
(1875 – 1961)
Hope you had a great day mate! 😀
D.
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
Carl Jung
(1875 – 1961)
Hope you had a great day mate. 😀
D.
“Holy Shit! It’s a chocolate bar!”
-Fraser on Friday night, nearly midnight.
Happy Birthday, Morgue. 🙂
“Man, YOU owe ME 12 dollars! We were at the grocery store and you REALLY wanted to get those stupid fish sticks shaped like Jane Austin, remember?” — Utahraptor, Dinosaur Comics (http://www.qwantz.com/)
Other choice quotes include:
(On Primitivism) “Comedy ensues! Whoah, did I say ‘comedy’ again? I meant to say ‘an encounter with prejudice about model minorities’.”
or
“Utahraptor! Searching for internet fetish pornography has robbed me of any erotic desires I may have once had!”
Happy days; and happy birthday.
Early 30s is great. Seriously great. Time to be really productive: write, write, write!
Also, happy birthday!
” if ya cant marry that woman, then the next best thing is to sing her lullabys and love songs”
Johnny Cash
Hope you have a happy birthday in the land of gentle giants and your lovely g/f gives you birthday treats.
I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No… not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that… over-throws life. Unbiddable, ungovernable – like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.
–Viola de Lesseps, “Shakespeare in Love”
To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.
–Mouse, “The Matrix”
Happy birthday sweetie.
x
‘It’s a good job I think you’re a woman’
– urt Munro to Tina the transvestive in The World’s Fastest Indian
(Sorry, that should have been Burt)
Here’s one from today’s Grauniad (Charlie Brooker fulminating against David Cameron)
I once overheard two posh people – almost certainly Tories – having sex in a hotel room. It was grim. The woman kept saying, “Fuck me, Gerald,” in a cut-glass accent, which was funny, but Gerald himself soon wiped the grin off my face with his grunting, which wasn’t really grunting at all, but instead consisted of the words “oh” and “ah” crisply orated aloud, like Sir Laurence Olivier reading dialogue off a card at an early rehearsal. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear the climax, but I imagine the words “gosh”, “crumbs”, and “crikey” probably put in an appearance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2047889,00.html
“This ain’t a song for the broken-hearted
No silent prayer for the faith-departed
I ain’t gonna be just a face in the crowd
You’re gonna hear my voice
When I shout it out loud
This is for the ones who stood their ground
For Tommy and Gina who never backed down
Tomorrow’s getting harder make no mistake
Luck ain’t even lucky
Got to make your own breaks
Better stand tall when they’re calling you out
Don’t bend, don’t break, baby, don’t back down
[Chorus:]
It’s my life
And it’s now or never
I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive
(It’s my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just want to live while I’m alive
‘Cause it’s my life”
– It’s my Life. Bon Jovi.
Happy, happy birthday Morgue.
Life just isn’t like the movies is it? We’re constantly led to believe in resolution in the establishment of the ideal status qua, and it’s just not true. Happy endings are a myth. Designed to make us feel better about the fact that life is just another thankless struggle.
Davey O’Shea was asked how he felt about Ireland’s cricketing exploits and answered honestly, “I’m proud of them, I didn’t even know we had a cricket team until I looked at Sky News and saw our postman throwing a ball at another lad.”
Happy Birthday Moose!
This one is, I feel, so appropriate for you:
“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
–Mark Twain
First, Herman must go over to the coffee machine. He closes his eyes while he sniffs in all he can. If he could remember his dreams, they would surely smell like that.
– from ‘Herman’ by Lars Saabye Christensen
‘What do you learn at school, Hans Thomas?’ Dad asked.
‘To sit still,’ I replied. ‘It’s so difficult that we spend years learning to do it.’
– from ‘The Solitaire Game’ by Jostein Gardner (I may have quoted this before, but I think it captures the essence of teaching)
he’s growing sadly
sadly
growing
up.
– from ‘Schoolboy’ by Roger McGough
Happy Birthday to you.
I’m trying hard
not to be ashamed
not to know the name
of who is waking up beside me
or the date, the season or the city
but at least the ceilings very pretty
– The Dresen Dolls, my alcoholic friends
“Do you know the difference between erotic and kinky?
Erotic is taking a feather and slowly, languorously stroking your partners body.
Kinky is using the whole fucking chicken.”
— Barry Cryer
“Only true masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.” Oscar Wilde
Happy birthday x x x
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, do wah do wah do wah do wah do wah.
Bill Hicks on those bibles you find in hotels…
Who are the fucking Gideons? Ever met one, no! Ever seen one, no! But they’re all over the fucking world, putting Bibles in hotel rooms! Every one of them: “This Bible was placed here by a Gideon.” When? I’ve been here all day and I ain’t seen shit! I saw the housekeeper come and go, I saw the minibar guy come and go, I’ve never laid eyes on a fucking Gideon! What are they, ninjas? Where are they? Where are they from? Gidea? Who the fuck are these people?!
I’m gonna capture a Gideon. Yeah, I’m gonna make that my hobby. I’ll call up the front desk one day and say, “Uh, I don’t seem to have a Bible in my room.”
Happy Birthday bud.
Some of my “oldies but faves”:
“She’s not playing with a full deck. She doesn’t have a deck. She has a three” – Buffy’s dialogue comes up trumps again
“When does the hurting stop?” – Bill, the Terrible Thunder Lizards from Eek the Cat
HB,M!
Happy birthday dude!! You know, it is really hard to think of you in your 30s since you have always been a wee young thing:-)
This isn’t really appropriate for a birthday, but it is the poem that has been going round my head recently, so it’s what you get…
Best wishes always!
Karen
“After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman,
Not the grief of a child
And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
In stead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth,
and you learn and learn…
With every good bye you learn.”
Veronica Shoffstall
“I don’t know where I’m being taken. I don’t know what waits for me, beyond the earth and sky. But I’m not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don’t have words for here.” – Ed, “The Man Who Wasn’t There”
“Wash it down with some fudge!”
-Anon (to protect the embarrassed)
“‘I should like to know which is worse, to be raped a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and flogged in an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in a galley, in short, to endure all the miseries through which we have passed, or to remain here doing nothing?'”
– from Voltiare’s ‘Candide’ (spoken,as I recall, by Candide)
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Brain turns one of my favourite movie quotes on its head:
In Italy under the Borgias they had 30 years of murder, bloodshed, warfare and produced indigestible pasta, boring operas, and the Fiat. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world, and Heidi
The Third Mouse
“Thy shall remember that guns, bitches, drugs and bling are not part of the four elements.”
Radio 1 song I just heard.
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams that stuff is made of.
(Anon)
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
~ Carl Sagan
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.
–Larry Lorenzoni
This wee gem was on a card I saw today, nice eh.
Spring is arriving in Scotland, so as I biked through Edinburgh today I found myself singing Dancing in the Street. Nothing to do with birthdays really, but it is a nice sentiment, and really should happen a whole lot more. So here’s how I remembered them:
All we need is music, sweet music
There’ll be music everywhere
There’ll be swinging and swaying and records playing
Dancing in the street
Happy Birthday Morgue,
Glad to hear it was a good one.
“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” – White Rabbit from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.
From one of my favourite movies, the Big Lebowski, here’s this little gem:
Walter: Am I wrong?
The Dude: No you’re not wrong.
Walter: Am I wrong?
The Dude: You’re not wrong Walter. You’re just an asshole.
Walter: All right then.
I used to like to identify with the Dude, more realistically I’m Walter :-).
Happy (Belated) Birthday.
Andrew
“As scientists and intellectuals, can we forge an understanding strong enough to give meaning to people’s lives, instill humility and inspire justice — even nourish a sense of grace and redemption?” Brian Cantwell Smith in the abstract to “God, Approximately”.
Because I’m a lady!
~Emily Howard
“Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol. C-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-cocaine” – Queens of the Stone Age
“All you people look at me like I’m a little girl.” – Britney Spears
“Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Put that baby spell on me
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Put that magic jump on me
Slap that baby, make him free” – David Bowie