Looking For Quotes

I’m considering a caper
With a printer and some paper
But my brain has turned to vapor
And I’ve only so much ink
I am looking for quotations
I can pin up in locations
That will tickle the sensations
And might make the readers think
If you know a bit of writing
That’s important or exciting
Whether feather-soft or biting
Or just something that you heard.
Give me statements; give me questions—
I am open to suggestions—
Just some atheist expressions
Cos I’d like to spread the word

Ok, so I’m looking for quotes I can use for a flyer campaign (yes, there is more to it than that; no, I’m not telling you). These would need to be relatively brief (since they will be printed on a sheet of paper and posted to a typical university bulletin board, and will be ignored if they are too wordy), interesting (my goodness, there are an awful lot of boring quotations about atheism out there!), and accurate (founding fathers quotes, especially, have been distorted to the point of pain, by both sides; I don’t want to propagate lies).

Examples:

Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.
–Emma Goldman, 1916

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
–Douglas Adams

The collections of atheist quotes I have seen collected elsewhere have (because they were collected for other purposes) tended to be too wordy, too familiar, and sometimes flat-out wrong. There are pragmatic reasons for briefer, pithier quotes here–something that can be read from across a room. And I tend to see the same quotes over and over again, so it would be cool if we could throw out the interweb databases altogether and just go with books, songs, movies, fortune cookies, poetry, users manuals, celebrity tattoos, or whatever you might have seen a nice quote hiding in.

And of course, it goes without saying that this would be a nice collection for anyone else who wants to use it–say, just as a public service, an atheist quote of the day/week/month/whatever in your local student paper, or chalked on the sidewalk next to the stuff the campus christian crusade wrote.

Anyway… Got quotes?

The Genuine Article

EvolveFISH’s Gavin sends a pic of the actual Cuttlefish sticker–alongside one of their more traditional designs, for a sense of scale. On their site, I very much preferred the black sticker; seeing the white one here, I am wavering.

Pic after the jump: [Read more…]

Wanted: Strong Demand

Update: Here’s the link to the product page. (currently they have the image mis-attributed; Mike McRae is, of course, the designer of the Cuttlefish With Quill, and I modified it for the emblem myself.)

Ok, so yesterday’s “Prototype” post included the facetious note to the EvolveFish people that this is what they were missing.

The one thing I was not expecting was that they would read it and comment:

I think we can have a vinyl cutout version of this on EvolveFISH.com by Wednesday noon. If there is strong demand, we can have an injection molded version in 5 weeks.

Shit just got real.

I know *I* want this to happen. If it does, of course, I expect my original (the Lassiter version) to be added to the Smithsonian collections… or something.

What all well-dressed cars will be wearing this season...

Wall Street Story (A Musical)

So I’m re-writing West Side Story*, the note-perfect retelling of Romeo and Juliet, transposed to New York City’s gang culture. This new version will, of course, feature the Liberal atheist boy who falls in love with the daughter (or not–depending on who we cast, I’m not ruling out the possibility of glbtq themes) of the local Tea Party leader… [Read more…]

Convenience Sampling

My personal proposal is the policy we need
(I asked my friends and family, and every one agreed)
I need a larger sample? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that—
Again, complete agreement with my views. (I asked my cat.)

Click and Clack, Redux

While looking for yesterday’s verse–the one I wanted to send to Car Talk, but did not–I came across another car-related poem (part of the same assignment, actually) which I had thoroughly forgotten about. It is a villanelle (most famously exemplified by Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”), and in this case, the best thing about the poem is its title. Which, as you will see, announces that it is a silly verse, and is a villanelle. After the jump: [Read more…]