Not Helping

Austin: Oh, just what we need, more grainy, out of focus pictures of
Bigfoot. It's people like you who are ruining the field of
cryptozoology!

Could you be a little more vague, please?

Jay: What was that movie, where that guy dies?

Vinny: That’s pretty much every movie.

How's Married Life

Greg: Oh, I don't feel too good about that.
Me: What? I'm just tenting my fingers!

Surf City, It Ain't

Me: Every group going into the bar has one female and two males.
Greg: It's a good night for the ladies.
Me: And a bad day for Jan & Dean.

Jackie Chan at the Salvadoran Restaurant

Me: You're watching a Chinese movie, dubbed into English, dubbed into
Spanish, edited for television, in a mirror.
Greg: I'm not watching it for the plot.

Implausible Deniability

Greg: I deny everything!
Me: Everything?
Greg: No!
Me: Hm, even that?
Greg: No!

Fire or Ice?

Greg: It's the apocalypse, with a vampire. Can it get any worse?
Me: There could be a zombie rising out of the back seat.
Greg: There probably is.

Comedy Tonight

Me: Is there a game on? Why are the stadium lights on? Oh, it says
volleyball.
Greg: Tonight, volleyball. Tomorrow...
Me: Tragedy tomorrow, volleyball tonight.
Greg: I was going to say curling, but that's more or less the same as
tragedy.

Overheard in Port Lavaca

Teenage mother: I didn't drink at all! I had beer at the reception,
and a couple of Jagers, and that shot you gave me, and that's it!

Not Helping

Me: They really have the worst dog toy ever over there. It's the gift that if I gave it to Mike, would once and for all make Jen forbid him to talk to me.
Greg: Lemme see it.
Me, holding horrible dog toy: Look at it. It's like a mess, with a handle.
Greg: It's fantastic. You should get it for Mike.

What was that?

Me: That would be the sound of Greg's heart breaking.
Greg: It'd be kind of a clanging squeak.

Logic

Greg: There we have it: proof that John Tesh is a commie.

Pok e joe's

Me: I don't know what's in these pickles.
Greg: Crack, apparently.

If a theorem falls in the forest...

Me: It's so mathematician of you to be allergic to something outdoorsy
and not know until you're 35 years old.
Greg: I've had poison ivy before! It wasn't this bad!
Me: Actually, it'd be more mathematician of you to never find out.
Because why would a mathematician go into the woods? To get to the
other side?
Greg: It's the only possible reason. And he wouldn't see the forest
for the trees.
Me: Terrible. But there's got to be a joke in there somewhere: why did
the mathematician go into the woods?
Greg: To get to the other side!
Me: That doesn't make any sense!
Greg: That's what makes it a mathematician joke!

Damn Ivies

Me: Okay, I'll say it: Cornell crazy.
Greg: Why?
Me: Beekeeping.
Greg: One word says it all.

Funereal Fun with Mike

(This is from my dad's funeral, June 2007; I just found it on a list of dad stories I keep meaning to write down. Hey: at least I have this, right?)

Mike: We have the photomosaic Christ, the needlepoint Last Supper, where's the decoupage pieta?

Honesty

Greg: I'm speaking from my heart here. My heart says "pickle."

Negative-Base Numbers

Me: Why would you do that? As a knee in the groin of the humanities
majors?
Greg: Yes! That's the whole point of mathematics!

Duration of entire conversation: 4 seconds

Greg: Stop accusing me of denying things quickly.
Me: But you do.
Greg: No, I don't.
Me: You did just then.
Greg: No!

Thursdays with Walter, week 4

about 15 minutes before class: What say we knock off early? See ya!

There's something in the atmosphere. Zombie. Spray zombie. We should all be hibernating.

I'm not real, I'm just inflatable.

"Please select logoff time." How about every fifteen seconds? That'll be fun.

One would hope that's a pseudonym, but maybe not.

What did Nicholson Baker call them? Cost-cutting, penny-pinching...whatever.

He's Canadian, so that's good. That makes him okay by me.

Let's buy a volatile toaster. BOOM! Wow! Did you see that one go?!

See what it does to people? Look at me!

Nothing exciting happens in these books unless you're about nine years old, and probably not even then.

So, you want to clean up after the parade?

Is there some place where it's just raining acid? Wait a minute--yes! America!

Call in the boys! Round up the gang!

Now we all have cultural assets, whether you like it or not.

You don't want your milk to have a friendly green putting-green top on it. Fuzzy!

I used to go to these meetings and listen to people bicker about the size of a cassette aperture. You ever wonder why that roll of 35 mm film fits in your camera the same as the last one? You forget that all of these conveniences are...convenient.

Everybody's got their master files as tifs, and now lossless jpeg 2000 comes along and it's got extensibility and flexibility and four doors instead of two and I don't know what.

Ah, dated comedy.

Why are you supposed to be using...Blue Fairy? Blue Ray? to play your movies on your...flying saucers? This is preservation class! We use technical terms all the time!!

They're in Bethesda; they must be good, because everything's more expensive in Bethesda.

Standards are a real strange business. These are people all over the world who get together and actually decide on something without starting a war.

They'd rather climb Mount Everest with nothing but a hat and bicycle.

If you speak German for more than an hour, your lips go numb.

Book repair disco music! Anyone who wants to dance, just break loose.

Oh, it's beautiful. It's like a Maserati. Don't you want to buy it, just to look at it?

Ah! Analog data compression, see?

Next thing you know, Goethe's going to appear and start singing.

You build a case with a drawer on the bottom, and on the top you have the book in the new binding, and down below is husband number one, kicked out in the cold: "I tried to give you shelter..."

Pay no attention to the man behind the thingies here.

You don't appreciate a football field-sized machine until you see people walking around it.

You people with your knowledge. You should go get jobs in technology factories or something.

What's happened to people's curiosity? "Here's a steamer trunk." "Oh, let's use it as a footrest!" How could you not look in it?

Ha ha ha, you didn't get to see the mortuary part.

Song of Myself? Boom, the ego's right there!

If you hate the Civil War, read Grant's memoirs.

Isn't technology kind of insane?

It's like a dinosaur eating a toothpick!

Mommy, what happened to the tree?

Hyah, step aside, I'm comin' though!

Do you have any papermaking videos? No? What kind of store is this?!

Doesn't that sound like a great idea? Go to a whole nother university and get a whole new degree, and never have money for 25 years, but you would know so much!

To me, that's a Frisbee that makes things happen.

Can you trust a Frenchman saying anything? Nothing personal.

The Times lies every day. All the news that's fit to print, heh heh heh.

Just one more thing about paper. Okay, just three more things about paper.

These are scientists. Have you ever hung out with scientists? They just come up with things, they don't know why. "I made paper out of tractor fenders!" "What ya gonna do with that?" "I dunno."

That's it for paper. Don't ask me any questions about paper. Forget about it. It's over. You had your chance.

Books are always talking to each other, you just need to get in on the conversation.

The Modern Classics, bound in deer hide, to display next to your gun rack.

Don't let the little paper that says "reproduction" fool you.

They all know each other, and publish incestuously.

Mobs of book-eating children going into the stacks! Can you see that?

Some rodent will see you and squeal to the press. Archy and Mehitabel will type it up.

It's hard to fine-tune a student early in the morning.

Tonight's exciting concluding episode...