Thoughts of Duckman

“Parking? And eating, and shopping and working. Somehow they all got chewed up and spit back out. They don’t taste like living anymore. Don’t you see what it’s like in this deranged, wearing, blender of a world? Everyday is an agonizing ordeal. Like balancing a pot of scalding water on your head while people whip your legs and butt…ah, ya never forget your senior prom. You think I’m sick? Well the only disease I’ve got is modern life! A schnug-busting gauntlet of inefficiency and misery, that’s one long parade of let-downs, put-downs, trickle-downs, shut-outs, freeze-outs, sell-outs, numb-nuts, nicken-putz and nimrods…All making everyday as much fun as waxing a flaming Pontiac with your tongue! Or even if you do look into the possibility of some fleeting pleasure, like say if some nymphomaniac telephone operator, with the muscle control of Romanian Mat-Slappers, agrees to a little strip air hockey, it’ll be over before it starts! Because some vowel-lacking, fed-a-reeking, cab jockey, slams his checker up your half-back, and the cab is owned by some piñata spanker from a Santeria cult in Waculpa, who starts shakin’ chicken bones at ya and gives ya a boil on your neck so big all it needs is Michael Jordan’s autograph to make it complete! And ever with all this, WITH ALL THIS… I still drag my butt off the Sealy every morning and stick my face in the reaping machine for one more day, knowing when it’s time to flash the cosmic card key at those pearly gates I won’t be in a coffin anyway, because some underhanded undertaker sold my heart, pancreas, and other assorted good and plenty to that same SANTERIA CULT! So does anybody really wonder why anybody is hanging onto sanity by the atoms at the tips of their fingernails?! While life dirty dances on their digits! And is it really any wonder why I seem deranged?!?!…Anyway what’s up docs? Am I getting out of here or not?”
- Duckman

An ode to Max Payne

The Max Payne movie is coming out in theaters in October. To celebrate its upcoming release here are some famous quotes from the game.

• The rain was coming down like all the angels in heaven had decided to take a piss at the same time.
• In a situation like mine, you can only think in metaphors.
• In a nightmare, every choice you make is a wrong one.
• What was clear in a dream suddenly makes no sense.
• It’s all a matter of perspective, tied to time and place, love and hate.
• The Past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror, as you piece it together, you cut yourself, your image keep shifting, and you change with it.
• Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back.
• I was so far beyond the point of no return; I didn’t even remember what it had looked like when I’d passed it.
• The secret trick is that there is no trick, no matter what the movies tell you. No rule, no secret mantra, no road map. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought differently was a fool.
• I might have laughed, if only I had remembered how.
• The winter night stretched on before me, endless.

And, of course:

It was almost morning. Waking up from the American Dream
We are willing to suffer, to die for the things we care about. For love, for the right choices.
Because of her, I had solved the case. My case, all of it. Who I am.
Is it worth it?
Saying that it never is would be a lie.
Sometimes you get lucky.
Sometimes, something good comes out of it. Something you know you wouldn’t deserve in a million years.
Something that gives you a reason to go on.
I had a dream about my wife.
She was dead.
But it was alright.

What does love mean?

What does love mean?
…. An email that I recieved the other day……..

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds,

“What does love mean?”

The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think:

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her
toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got
arthritis too. That’s love.”
Rebecca- age 8

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
Billy – age 4

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”
Karl – age 5

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”
Chrissy – age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.”
Terri – age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”
Danny – age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss”
Emily – age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”
Bobby – age 7 (Wow!)

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,”
Nikka – age 6

(We need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.”
Noelle – age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”
Tommy – age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Cindy – age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody . You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.”
Clare – age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”
Elaine-age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.”
Chris – age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”
Mary Ann – age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.”
Lauren – age 4

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” (what an image)
Karen – age 7

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”
Jessica – age 8

And the final one — Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a
contest he was asked to judge.

The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly
gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard,
climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,

“Nothing, I just helped him cry”

A whisper in the void

There are a number of quotes and sayings which I love to re-read from time to time. These are from famous people, books, movies, even tv-shows and games…

The next time you feel down, read over them and you will feel a little better.

• Happiness is finding someone whose flaws you can live with, and who can live with your flaws.

• Grab the popcorn and soda, because the GOP is providing the nuts.

• Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us. – Henri Matisse

• “I have 26 windows open and most windows have multiple tabs open each (one has 30 tabs).”
  Jesus H. Christ.
  Same thing I said, what an amateur.
  If the Son of God is an amateur, who do you consider a professional?
  Chuck Norris

• Don’t let other people belittle your ambitions. Only small people do that. Truly great people make you feel that you, too, can also become great.

• Of all abilities the maker has bestowed on men none is more special than the ability to love another.

• You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete – Buckminster Fuller

• Your culinary prowess are surpassed only by your unfailing grace and the uncommon, sometimes haunting glow of sensuality that surrounds you.

• Interesting how the need for substance in an unexamined life often times breeds gullibility.

• You are an odd, little man but you have a way with a witty retort.

• While I haven’t a clue of what you are saying, I’ll take your air of bon ami at face value.

• I am afraid I am destined to be a Siegfried without a Roy, a Roy without a Dale, a Dale without a Chip.

• Nobody dies a virgin, life screws us all.

• The kiss, the sweet discovery of oneself after a long search.

• The Past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror, as you piece it together, you cut yourself, your image keep shifting, and you change with it.

• Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

• I was so far beyond the point of no return; I didn’t even remember what it had looked like when I’d passed it.

• The secret trick is that there is no trick, no matter what the movies tell you. No rule, no secret mantra, no road map. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought differently was a fool.

• God isn’t interested in technology. He cares nothing for the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time, forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men!

• At 50 everyone has the face he deserves – George Orwell

• Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy – Benjamin Franklin

• Have you ever woken up in a Cambodian gaming parlour and realised you were living in a dark dank of abyss and emptiness?

• I love funny exit lines.

• I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it – Mae West

• If the good guy gets the girl, it’s rated PG; if the bad guy gets the girl, it’s rated R; and if everybody gets the girl, it’s rated X – Kirk Douglas

• The neo cons wanted a utopia but because of their myopia we ended up with a dystopia.

• Don’t take life too serious. You’ll never escape it alive anyway.

• Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean no one’s out to get you.

• It is not special to be special; it is special to be ordinary. – Shah Rukh Khan

• A decision to have a child is a decision to have a piece of your heart walk outside your body. – Shah Rukh Khan

• If we don’t move ahead with this project today it will never make the shelfs in time for all those fabricated special occasions we managed to establish as cultural doctrine.

and finally,

• Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl; girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy; love will find a way, love never loses, put your money on love.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.