Rocket Scientist

Yep, I said I had a bunch.  Feel free to add a favorite of yours or write your own!

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
– David J. Liszewski

The Web site you seek
Cannot be located but
Endless others exist.
– Joy Rothke

Errors have occurred.
We won’t tell you where or why -
Lazy programmers!
– Charlie Gibbs

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot
Order will return.
– Suzie Wagner

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
– Mike Hagler

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
– Margaret Segall

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
So beautifully.
– Simon Firth

With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
“My Novel” not found.
– Howard Korder

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao until
You bring fresh toner.
– Bill Torcaso

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
– James Lopez

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
– David Dixon

You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
– Cass Whittington

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
– Francis Heaney

Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
– Judy Birmingham

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
–Ian Hughes

Server: poor response
Not quick enough for browser
Time out, plum blossom.
– Rik Jespersen

Rather than beep
Or a rude error message:
These words: “File Not Found”.
– Len Dvorkin

The code was willing!
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.
– Barry L. Brumitt

Everything is gone.
Your life’s work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger? (yes/no)
– David Carlson

No keyboard present
Hit F1 to continue
Zen engineering?
– Jim Griffith

This site has been moved
We’d tell you where, but then we’d
Have to delete you.
– Charles Matthews

Printer not ready.
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?
– Pat Davis

Logon incorrect!
Only perfect spellers may
Enter this system!
– Jason Axley

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
– David Ansel

Ten thousand things
How long do any persist?
Explorer is gone.
– Jason Willoughby

Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again.
– Chris Walsh

This site uses frames
And yet your browser does not.
One of these will change.

For a new PC,
Center of my universe,
I abandon all.

Yes, it’s Friday and I should put up something fabulous, but I can’t because I won’t be here.  Why, you say?  Because I’m going to the theater to watch Les Misérables, one of my favorite modern musicals.  Love the music.  Love the chorale pieces.  It’s one of a very very small number of musicals I’ve seen on stage (where I paid a lot to sit in the nosebleed section) and I get to see it again tonight.  WooHoo!  And my ticket is much better and I get to hang with my friend who has season tickets so it’s all good.  (Poor Lee, really must let him get out of the house some this weekend).

Now, I have a number of friends (and a husband) who all love classical music.  I like classical music, too, but I like it best if I can sing to it.  Classic choir, opera, lieder, operetta, and, yes, musicals.  I like pop and R&B and other stuff as well.  I’m REALLY eclectic.

Interestingly enough, as I’m writing this sort of fill in the blank post on why I won’t be here because I’ll be enjoying music, oldwestmom of ForeverFamily is starting a new blog on classical music appreciation (called Symphony Rocks!).    Seriously, if you like music, but not the classic kind, you should check it out and find out what you’re missing.  And, if you love classical music, you should check it out so you can share and discuss that love.

Hey, getting together (virtually) to discuss what we love, that’s kind of what blogging is all about.  Isn’t it?

Today, of course, is the day I steal my own comment from (usually) someone else blog and make a post about it.  Kudos to Relax Max of Clarity2009 for giving me a doozy.  He wrote a blog , actually, in response to a quote I’d given on Saturday: 

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” -Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953, a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

He noted that, though he thought he poor should be fed, he also saw a use for defense.  Actually, he said a great deal of useful thoughtful things, some of which I agreed with.  But I was intrigued by the implication that Eisenhower, although he may have said this is in a speech, was unlikely to have really felt this way.  I’m not so sure.

Now, let me be clear.  I am not objective.  I am mostly pacifist by nature and I won’t pretend otherwise.  If the draft included women and I were drafted, I would have to be a contientious objector because I could never kill someone for wearing a different uniform (though I recognize it is necessary in war, I could not do it).  That doesn’t make me strictly nonviolent, mind you.  I can think of several circumstances where I could kill, probably with a clean conscience, but it would be personal and I would know that the individual I was killing was a monster, not presuming it.  But I digress.  

I also think, personally, that this country spends far too much on defense and, worse, spends the money poorly.  I’m of the opinion that warfare as we knew it in WWII has long outlived it’s usefulness and and that carpet bombing civilians and attacking with hordes of impressionable young people is no longer useful.  No, I was not a fan of the Iraq war or even the one in Afghanistan.  In my opinion, war is an action of last resort, when you have exhausted every alternative  and you are faced with a future even worse than war if no action is taken.  War, even when well justified (as we were in WWII) is horrible.  In my opinion, if war is used for anything less than absolute necessity, it is treason, it is a betrayal not only of the the trust our soldiers who signed up for our military put in their leadership and a the people of this nation, but also a crime against those killed.  Note, I don’t say you have to agree with me.  But it’s how I feel about it.

This nation spends more than the entire rest of the world on defense.  That it spends more than 10X what more weapons for our infantry and bigger and better conventional weapons when we’re already tops on this is nothing but a gravy train for contractors.  Better to spend it on training for our most elite corps and using intelligence and brains to deal with threats surgically rather than with blunt force; we’d be doing ourselves a favor.

Anyway, back to my original point.  As most of you know, I gather quotes.  One day when I was trolling through Wikiquote, I stumbled upon the topic of “war” and was surprised by the views of so many I would have expected to be warmongers or were involved in war, how much my own thinking reflects their own.   OK, there are some pacifists in here, too.

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
–Albert Einstein

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
–Russell Baker

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
–Ronald Reagan

They serve so that we don’t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?
–Michael Moore

What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
–John F. Kennedy

We are defined by how we use our power.
–Gerry Spence

When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.
–Arthur Ponsonby

The sons of torture victims make good terrorists.
–André Malraux

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
–Jimmy Carter

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
–John F. Kennedy

No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.
–Woodrow Wilson

Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else, and that’s the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result. I can’t think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what’s the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that’s getting just as many troops killed?
–Gen. Anthony Zinni, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), former CENTCOM Commander-in-Chief, 2004-05-21, television interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes”

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out…and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel … and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” — with his mouth.
–What Is Man? (1906) by Mark Twain

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
–The War Prayer by Mark Twain [Twain, as you know, was a sarcastic ass, but apparently a pacifist]

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
– Interview in Göring’s jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946) [did anyone else think this sounded familiar?]

A pre-emptive war in ‘defense’ of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
–J. William Fullbright

I have concluded, there is no war, in the history of man, that could not have been avoided by 15 minutes of honest diplomacy.
–Andrew Mutton

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
–Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.
–Douglas MacArthur

It is a tribute to the humanity of ordinary people that horrible acts must be camouflaged [with words] like security, peace, freedom, democracy, the ‘national interest’.
–Howard Zinn, Boston U professor & former WWII bomber pilot, USA.

Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.
–Robert Nichols

Peace cannot be achieved by force, only by understanding.
–Albert Einstein

War in our time has become an anachronism. Whatever the case in the past, war in the future can serve no useful purpose. A war which became general, as any limited action might, would only result in the virtual destruction of mankind.
–General Dwight David Eisenhower

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
–Mahatma Gandhi

There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
–Benjamin Franklin

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
–Desiderius Erasmus

When the rich make war it’s the poor that die.
–Jean-Paul Sartre

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.
–Ronald Reagan

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.
–Boris Yeltsin

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil,” it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
–Sydney J. Harris

 Just sayin’.

I’m going to take a break from short stories (sort of) because I read a post on Bookish’ blog wherein someone wrote a book transforming the classic Pride and Prejudice to an alternate book:  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 

OK.  Zombies aren’t my thing and I’m very fond of the original.  However, bookish quoted a portion of the new book including a swashbuckling Mr. Darcy (and a courteously puking Mr. Bingley) and that got me to thinking.  Even if this particular incarnation doesn’t appeal, wouldn’t it be fun to play with taking a bit of classic and give it a different twist, either environment or condition?

Now I could tell you some possibilities, but here, I’ll show you.  Like “The Cask of Amontillado”…

“He is an ignoramus,” interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. At a small cozy room, and realizing he had reached the extremity of the corridor, and finding his progress arrested by the wall, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the couch. In its surface were two iron staples. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.

“Pass your hand,” I said, “over the table; you will find a catalog for tupperware. Indeed, it is the very latest lineup. I implore you again, would you not care to give me a ride so I can leave my damn house? No? Then I must positively tell you all about our new spring colors.  And let’s not forget our new core decor items!”

“I thought we were having coffee!” ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.

“Too bad,” I replied; “You could have sprung for Starbucks.”

Or, perhaps, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but D8N40, who’s programming was clearly in need of an overhall, instead of keeping to the road, made an opposite turn and plunged headlong down hill to the left, it’s hovering capability malfunctioning so that the ride was unreasonably rough. This road leads through a delapidated ghetto shaded by disintegrating skyscrapers for about a four blocks, where it crosses the laserbridge which formed the boundary to the standard monitored city, where help was readily available.

As yet the the robotic steeds errors prompted full speed so that it gave him advantage in the chase; but just as he had got halfway through the ghetto the antigrav unit gave way and he felt the unit stutter and fail beneath him. He tried to fumble a backup program into place and run a diagnostic, but the unit whined back into power before he had a chance to do anything, but it was only half power and stuttered across the ground on one side, jolting him terrifically.  Now he could hear them, his pursuers, greedy for his technology, despite the malfunctions. For a moment the terror of his boss intruded as this was his transportation unit; but this was no time for petty fears; the aliens were hard on his heels, and (unskilled rider that he was) he had much ado to maintain his seat, sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jerked backwards with a violence that he verily feared would rend him on the back lip.

A glow in the distance now cheered him with the hopes that the laserbridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a blue glow in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the gleam of the bridge dimly glowing under the broken street lights ahead. He recollected the place where other travelers had disappeared. “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the, black chittering, the panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt their hot breath. Another clumsy fumbling at the control panel and he got the unit to lurch forward slightly faster; he thundered over the surface made of naught but light; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuers should vanish, according to rule, unable to follow him across the beam of light. Just then he saw the aliens cluster at the laser’s edge and, as one, spit some vile concoction over the small river. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the plascrete, and transportation unit, the aliens and their greedy followers passed by like a whirlwind.

 So, you try.  I would stick to books or stories in the public domain, but, hey, knock yourself out.

Or, if you don’t want to go to that much trouble, hey, I’ll just field your ideas of new ways to transform old classics.  After all, it’s supposed to be fun.