Saturday, October 30, 2010

Homer Simpson Quotes

(Better than having to wait for them while watching the show.)
When will I learn? The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle - they're on TV!

Bingo! I love that game, but I can't remember what to say when you win.

Ah, beer. The cause of and the solution to all of life's problems.

What's the point of going out? We're just going to wind up back here anyway.

Lisa, vampires are make believe, like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.

Save me, Jeebus!

Facts are meaningless - you could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!

I'm not impressed easily. Wow! A blue car!

Well, crying isn't gonna bring him back, unless your tears smell like dog food.

I don't hate your mother, I just won't be sad when she dies.

How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain - remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?

Who are you? Why am I here? I want answers now or I want them eventually!

Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'Sir' without adding, 'You/re making a scene'.

I'm a 'Spalding Gray' in a 'Rick Dees' world.

Donuts...is there anything they can't do?

Trying is the first step toward failure.

Because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything!

That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!

You know those balls that they put on car antennas so you can find them in the parking lot? Those should be on every car!

Marge, I'm going to miss you so much. And it's not just the sex! It's also the food preparation.

When I look at the smiles on all the children's faces, I just know they're about to jab me with something.

America's health care system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, well...all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay!

It's like something out of that "twilighty" show about that zone.

Marge, you being a cop makes you the man - which makes me the woman; and I have no interest in that, besides occasionally wearing the underwear, which (as we discussed) is strictly a comfort thing.

Whenever Marge turns on one of her "non-violent" programs, I take a walk. I go to a bar, I pound a few, then I stumble home in the mood for love...

It's not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.

English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England!

I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming.

Without our immigrants, who will kick our field goals, or train our white tigers?

Oh no! What have I done? I smashed open my little boy's piggy bank, and for what? A few measly cents, not even enough to buy one beer. Wait a minute, lemme count and make sure...not even close!

Beer - now THERE'S a temporary solution.

How could you? Haven't you learned anything from that guy who gives those sermons at church? Captain What's His Name? We live in a society of laws! Why do you think I took you to all those "Police Academy" movies? For fun? Well, I didn't hear anybody laughing - did you? Except at that guy who made sound effects. Where was I? Oh yeah, stay out of my booze.

Or what? You'll release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark they shoot bees at you?

You're saying butt-kisser like it's a bad thing!

Well, let's just call them, uh, Mr. X and Mrs. Y. So anyway, Mr. X would say, 'Marge, if this doesn't get your motor running, my name isn't Homer J. Simpson.'

I know what you're saying, Bart. When I was young, I wanted an electric football machine more than anything else in the world, and my parents bought it for me, and it was the happiest day of my life. Well, goodnight!

Apu, you got any Skittle Brau? Never mind, just give me some Duff and a pack of Skittles.

You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel.

Those guys were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

Extended warranty? How can I lose?

Mmmmmm - 52 slices of American cheese.

Hey, I asked for ketchup - I'm eatin' salad here!

When I first heard that Marge was joining the police academy, I thought it would be fun and zany, you know like that movie... "Spaceballs". But instead it was dark and disturbing, like that movie "Police Academy".

I think Mr. Smithers picked me for my motivational skills. Everyone always says they have to work twice as hard when I'm around!

Son, when you participate in sporting events - it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get.

Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen.

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!

I'm trying to fix your mother's camera. Easy, easy - Hmmm. I think I need a bigger drill.

You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is 'never try'.

Oh, everything's too damned expensive these days. Like this Bible. It cost 15 bucks! And talk about a preachy book! Everybody's a sinner! Except this guy.

God bless those pagans.

Don't let Krusty's death get you down, boy. People die all the time, just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow! Well, good night!

If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now, quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers!

You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.

Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy.

I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.

With $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like... love!

All right, let's not panic. I'll make the money by selling one of my livers. I can get by with one.

Woo hoo! 350 dollars! Now I can buy 70 transcripts of Nightline!

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.

When I held that gun in my hand, I felt a surge of power - like God must feel when he's holding a gun.

You know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.

I hope I didn't brain my damage!

Nuts and gum, together at last!

We'll die together, like a father and son should.

Let us celebrate this agreement with the adding of chocolate to milk.

We're gonna get a new TV. Twenty-one inch screen, realistic flesh tones, and a little cart so we can wheel it into the dining room on holidays!

First you don't want me to get the pony, then you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!

Son, a woman is a lot like a... a refrigerator! They're about six feet tall, 300 pounds. They make ice, and... um... Oh, wait a minute. Actually, a woman is more like a beer.

Now what is a wedding? Well, Webster's dictionary describes a wedding as the process of removing weeds from one's garden.

Now, Marge, don't discourage the boy. Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.

You can't go wrong with cocktail weenies. They look as good as they taste. And they come in this delicious red sauce. It looks like ketchup, it tastes like ketchup, but brother, it ain't ketchup!

I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down."

I don't have to be careful, I've got a gun!

I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!

Oh, they have Internet on computers now.

Marge I swear, I never thought that you would find out.

Books are useless: I only ever read one book, "To Kill A Mockingbird" - and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the color of his skin, but what good does THAT do me?

Shut up, brain, or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip!

I am so smart, I am so smart, S M R T, I mean S M A R T.

I'm not gonna lie to you, Marge. See ya soon!

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A Movie for Every State

Sunday, October 17, 2010

NON-PAPER NEWSPAPER COLUMN: I'm Out of Print

By Tobin Barnes

Well, either the paper-newspaper business is dying before our eyes or it's me (or maybe it's a combination of the two).


Here's the story:

I never knew when one paper was going to run my stuff or, more importantly, pay me, so I quit that outfit a few years ago. Another publisher hasn't paid me for my columns for over a year (my work appeared in two of their newspapers), so I'm writing that off as bad debt. And now a local paper, the Northern Hills Journal, has suddenly gone belly up (hastily announced the day of its last issue), so that's gone, too.

Are we detecting a trend here?

SAN FRANCISCO - FEBRUARY 26:  Newspaper salesm...The Northern Hills Journal was an adjunct of the Rapid City Journal, which seems to be pulling in its resources, as are most newspapers, for the last onslaught of the inevitable trend toward digital media.

All I was left with was the good-old Yankton Press & Dakotan, which has always been efficient and dependable for me. Good folks down there.


But writing for one publication, which I would have jumped at 18 years ago--in fact, I did--no longer appeals to me.

Believe it or not, putting out a column almost every week, takes a certain amount of work, enjoyable though it may be. My compensation always has been figurative peanuts compared to almost any other kind of effort, including a kid mowing the yard, and if I continued for one paper, it would be very few peanuts, indeed. So few that it wouldn't be worth being locked into a regular schedule.


All that being said, I'm leaving the paper-newspaper business to its ultimate fate, but will continue to amuse myself--and occasionally you too, hopefully--with this blog.  I'm certain that something like this will continue for the rest of my life, albeit serving a much smaller audience. I've always been addicted to putting something of myself out there, even when it's been for myself only.

The full-length columns will probably be much more irregular, but shorter commentaries may often take their place--long or short, I'll never shut up. That, perhaps, may be more interesting for all concerned anyway in this shorter-attention-span age.


If you've contributed ideas and links and things before, I hope you will continue to do so, as I've greatly enjoyed sharing them and hearing from you. And I also hope you will check in every once in a while to see what's going on.

Catch you later.
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Business Plan 101

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Your Choice

  • “Who you calling chicken?”
  • “Hey, I’m not duck soup.”
  • “Quick, duck behind the couch.”
  • “Oops, we don’t have lips.”
  • “Am I just a feather in your cap?”
  • “Not tonight, I have a migrate headache.”
  • “I bet you say that to all the chicks.”


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Friday, October 1, 2010

COLUMN: On the Bag

By Tobin Barnes
         So after getting the valuable down-low tip from Rocky, the car dealer, I rode my bike out to the country club about a mile beyond the city limits.

Counting the distance across town, it turned into a pretty good jaunt that I knew I’d be pedaling every day, particularly when the wind was up, and, heck, it was always windy in eastern Sodak.
             
After parking my bike amongst a bunch of others, I walked up to the pro in the dinky little pro shop there and told him Rocky had sent me, like I was drug mule or trying to get into a speakeasy or something. He looked puzzled, so I also told him Rocky said I could get a job as a caddy.

He told me that, sure, I could be a caddy, just like any other kid that regularly showed up, but he’d never heard of Rocky, which was much as I’d suspected on both counts. Nothing fancy-schmantzy about this gig.

After all, we’re talking lower-level upscale here when we’re talking “country club” in a medium-sized town on the prairie. Just a matter of some local people making marginally more money than most and being able to afford to goof around playing golf a few days a week.

Sure, there were two or three truly wealthy members: one owned a multi-state chain of grocery stores, and another owned a good-sized highway construction company grown fat on the new interstate highway system.

Golf balls.The grocery store guy even had a private plane and could afford to fly anywhere in the world and play real country clubs—which he did—although he was the same hacker in those places as he was at home. (“Hacker” is what we caddies called the lousy to mediocre golfers who populated the place—uh huh, the vast majority, but I’m getting ahead of the story.)

Most of the members were middle class, or maybe upper middle class in some cases. They were the town’s doctors, lawyers, dentists and small businessmen, who unlike their more sober fellow citizens, thought of golf as a legitimate pastime.

But for a kid whose parents were usually on the fingernail-clutching edge of solvency, these people were the moneyed aristocrats of my little rural world. I would initially be goggle-eyed at having the honor of carrying their bags and tending their flagsticks. That reverence would wear off.

The pro was a cocky, strutting little bantam rooster named Dick Clark, who actually looked a lot like the other Dick Clark of American Bandstand. He was originally from Kansas City and would go back there after a couple years.

His buddies, but not the caddies, made a play on his name by sometimes calling him Click Clack. He was in his mid-twenties with wind resistant, Brylcreemed and carefully combed hair, and, of course, he never wore any kind of a cap that would cover up that masterpiece of coiffure.

Though small in stature, he had a great golf swing and hit the ball a mile with a big looping draw. He walked with a confident swagger, knowing that he was the closest thing to a real golfer this area had ever seen.

He was immediately my first non-TV idol.

The thing that really sealed the deal was a picture he had hanging in the pro shop. There he was standing with Jack Nicklaus in one of those faked-up poses of them supposedly examining a golf club.

Yeah, our version of Dick Clark pictured with the guy they used to call “Fat Jack” in his early years as opposed to the slimmer Jack of later years, but I didn’t know any other version of Jack at the time than the “Great Jack Nicklaus.”

Wow! It was like Dick Clark had instant credentials for me.

That same day, Dick took me out with him on my first caddy job as kind of a training mission. He showed me how to balance the weight of the bag horizontally across my back and what my job would be on the greens. The rest was a matter of keeping up or even staying ahead and, of course, making sure I always knew where the hell the ball was.

Nope, it wasn’t rocket science, but I loved it from the first hole on.  
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