Fish
So I installed Ubuntu on the empty partition on my main drive yesterday. One of the first things I did was set the OS langauge to German 8), but I also, accidently, put a little program called "fish" into the top panel. It's some sort of random quote thing or something. I clicked the fish (or fisch as the Germans would say it) today while trying to change the default boot partition for Grub and the following quote popped up:
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry
I really like this one due to the Dostoyevsky reference. I had to read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment for AP English this year. It was a good book, but very long. With Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky is basically asking if there are people in this world that rise above social law. He speculates that these so-called "Supermen" are able to get away with things that normal people are not. Of course, it'd be easier to ask the question than to write such a long book on it, but I guess that's what authors do, ya know? I suggest you read it, it's very good.
Bahahaha! Just clicked it again and got this:
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
-- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
(block quotes don't work too well in update classes <_<)
June 6th, 2006 - 14:40
Dave Barry is a comedian right? Name sounds familiar.
I had to read Crime and Punishment for AP English when I was a senior. They had us read it before the school year started though, so I had to read it along with 12 other books. They’re all a blur, no idea what happened in any of them.
I’ve never delved into the world of Linux. Have you tried a pre-release version of Vista? I don’t even know what the big “changes” are, so I’m not sure if I should be excited or not.
June 6th, 2006 - 15:01
I have not tried a pre-release of Vista. Beta Microsoft software has a tendency to scare me. Besides, I don’t see myself upgrading to Vista. XP does everything I need it to do. By the time Vista-only games start coming out, I’ll probably not have enough to play them, what with college and all.
You had to read twelve books over the summer? I only had to read four. All teachers are different though.
June 7th, 2006 - 15:30
Yah…it was like 8 only needed a short book report, and 4 needed a really detailed report. I think I ended up splitting the workload with other people, and then we just rewrote the others report in our own words. I don’t think they were even graded.
Where you going to school next year?
June 8th, 2006 - 01:21
Heh, that’s the way to do things =P
I’m going to Illinois Tech next year. I’m looking forward to leaving, even though it’s only about a four hour drive from here.