Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
-Sam Keen

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.
-James Dent

Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.
-Nora Ephron

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
-Henry James

If you are going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

Youth is wasted on the young.
-George Bernard Shaw

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.
-Dave Barry

I’ve always found the celebration of war casualties to be a strange reason for a holiday. War is fraught with contradiction…

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
-Ulysses S. Grant

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
-George Carlin

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-Voltaire

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
-Bertrand Russell

Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
-Joseph Heller, Catch-22

War is not an adventure.  It is a disease.  It is like typhus.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is estimated that Earth as a whole is struck by an average of more than a hundred lightning bolts every second.

A lightning bolt can be over five miles long.

A typical bolt of lightning is no more than an inch in diameter.

A lightning bolt can raise the temperature of the air by as much as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lightening typically travels at one-third the speed of light.

The energy contained in a single lightning strike can power a 100 Watt light bulb for 90 days.

The odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000.

The odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is 1 in 3,000.

Today is John Wayne’s birthday. Don’t the wise words of this old gunslinger make you long for the good old days, when men were men and women were women?

Women have the right to work wherever they want, as long as they have the dinner ready when you get home.
- John Wayne

Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.
- John Wayne

If you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
- John Wayne

Okay, maybe not. Happy birthday anyway Mr. Wayne, wherever you are.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
-Henry Ward Beecher

Apologies. Our “Two Fer Tuesday” never seems to actually have two, does it.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.
- Will Rogers

Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.
- Will Rogers

Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.
- Will Rogers

..what is this, some kind of quote – quote misattribution joke - enquote?  It’s interesting how much we rely on others for information. If you’re the kind of person who trusts quote sites on the web, you need new friends. One of the most prominent of them can’t seem to tell the difference between football coaches and fabulists.  BrainyQuote.com says that today’s quote was uttered by both Lou Holtz and Aesop . Which one is it? Ah well, as Lou Holtz and Aesop said:

After all is said and done, more is said than done.
-Lou Holtz and Aesop

There’s sort of a built-in fail factor when predicting the end of the world, but everyone seems to have an angle anyway. As a followup to last week’s blacktastical Factastical Friday edition, and in honor of the world ending tomorrow, this week’s “facts” are about the end of the world.

Many Orthodox Jews believe the world as we know it will end in 2240 CE.

Many Buddhists believe that we’ll know the end of the world is coming when morality disappears and people start following the “10 Amoral Concepts”, which are theft, violence, murder, lying, evil speaking, adultery, idle talk, covetousness, greed, and perverted lust.

Hmmm…

Scientists believe the world will end in five billion years when our sun is dying.

Frankly, that Buddhist thing sounds as credible as the science thing to me. And as we said at the top, plenty of people bung this whole thing up. Here’s a list of 242 (we didn’t count ‘em) end of the world predictions, and here’s an easier-to-look-at list of 44 failed predictions.

Frankly, I’ve always been fond of the “Zee End of Zee World” video below.

So long, sinners. (more…)