“And like most of her peers, Barbara Ann has a French postal worker's sense of divine entitlement when it comes to her hours.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“Now, I’ve never heard a rabid hyena shriek from rectal acid burns. But I’ll bet that sounds a lot like Mllsh-mllsh introducing a guest.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“I used to think that English-speaking who conveniently look, dress, and act human only turned up in lazy science fiction. But as Carly and Frampton dematerialized, I became grimly aware of how well they'd also fit into a psychotic hallucination.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“Clippy got that pervert-on-the-playground look again..”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“I have now scoured your Internet, and have identified several ersatz concierges that were created by your own society, and are in current and active use throughout it. I strongly suggest that you allow me to import and implement one of them.” I caught Manda’s eye. She shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Earth’s most popular ersatz concierge has had hundreds of millions of users—although its usage has declined rather dramatically in recent years. Shall we try that one?” I really, really, really should have asked why the thing was shedding users. Instead I shrugged and said, “Why not?” The dazzling, octodimensional projection instantly transformed into a flat rendering of a paperclip with googly eyes. “That’s an ersatz concierge?” Manda whispered after a shocked silence. “Dear God …” As she said this, the paperclip’s eyes darted cunningly from side to side. Then a cartoon bubble appeared above its head reading, “It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?” It was Clippy—the despised emcee of Microsoft Office. I knew him well. Because while he had allegedly retired long ago, my firm—like so many others—had clung to the Clippy-infested Windows XP operating system for years beyond its expiration date, staving off the expense and trauma of a Windows upgrade. That process had finally started eighteen months back. But copyright associates are low in the priority queue—and I had been slated to get upgraded “next month” for as long as I could remember. “Okay, go back,” I said. Clippy stared at me impassively. “Stop it. Cut it out. Go back. Use the other interface. Use the gem thing.” As I said this, Clippy’s eyes started darting again as he scribbled on a notepad with an animated pencil. Another cartoon bubble appeared. “It looks like you’re making a list. Should I format it?” I fell into an appalled silence. Then Manda gave it a shot. “We do not want to use this ersatz concierge,” she enunciated clearly. “Please return us to the previous one.” Clippy gazed back with bovine incomprehension. We went on to try every command, plea, and threat that we could think of. But we couldn’t get back to the prior concierge. Luckily, the stereopticon’s projector mode was still working fine (“If you download Windows Media Player, I’m throwing you under a bus,” Manda warned it).”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“I looked at Judy as calmly as I could. "Music and movie piracy..." I slipped into a dramatic pause as I desperately tried to come up with some idea, any idea. I scanned the room for inspiration, briefly glimpsed Randy-- I had my answer. "...are terrorism.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“And so, October 13, 1977; 8:29 p.m. EST became the dawning moment of Year Zero to the rest of the universe.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“After listening intently for a few seconds, he turned to me. “North Vietnam?” He shook his head derisively. “Very, very bad.” He listened some more, then denounced Brezhnev.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“A scouting craft soon entered our solar system. It detected several broadcast signals, and routed the strongest one (WABC-TV in New York) to a distant team of anthropologists—who then found themselves watching a first-run episode of the hit sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (the one in which Arnold Horshack joins a zany youth cult). Before I get into what happened next, I should mention that music is the most cherished of the forty so-called Noble Arts that Refined beings revere and dedicate their lives to. It is indeed viewed as being many times Nobler than the other thirty-nine Arts combined. And remember—their music sucks. The first alien Kotter watchers initially doubted that we had music at all, because everything about the show screamed that we were cultural and aesthetic dunderheads. Primitive sight gags made them groan. Sloppy editing made them chuckle. Wardrobe choices practically made them wretch. And then, it happened. The show ended. The credits rolled, and the theme music began. And suddenly, the brainless brutes that they’d been pitying were beaming out the greatest creative achievement that the wider universe had ever witnessed. Welcome back, Welcome back, Welcome back.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“Proving once again that dumbshits with flashlights can look like gods to geniuses, if the geniuses are from the technological past,”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“self-defense—since any society that’s violent and stupid enough to self-destruct on H-bombs might easily destroy the entire universe if it survives long enough to invent something with real firepower.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“music licensing is an arcane thicket of ambiguity, overlapping jurisdictions, and litigation. This”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“Because we need to enlist the greatest copyright attorney on Earth. If not … the universe.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“No, we haven’t stopped the spread of pirated music or movies online, nor have we slowed it even slightly. But we do get paid pornographically vast sums for trying our very best.”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“Nick,” Judy said. “Just like blacks can use the N-word with impunity, and queers can use the F-word, and orientals can use the A-word, Mitzi and I are within the bounds of decorum when we joke about other women being sluts. But as a man in a phallocentric society, you cross a bright, red line when you do that—particularly in a professional setting. Is that clear?”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
“He’s had some surprising successes (e.g., Amish vs. Aliens—a maddeningly addictive Facebook game). He’s had some awful flops (e.g., Forever 29—a store for older women who liked to dress like trashy youngsters, and lie about their age). And”
― Rob Reid, quote from Year Zero
Rob Reid
Born place: in New York City, The United States
Born date October 2, 1965
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“Crashing into the trembling void
Stretching my hand to you
Losing myself to frigid regret
Is this fragile love
A way
To say
Good-bye”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from Shiver
“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, quote from The Wind in the Willows
“...suddenly I was afraid of what Father would say. Afraid he would say, "There'll be someone else soon," and that forever afterward this untruth would lie between us. For in some deep part of me I knew already that there would not--soon or ever--be anyone else.
The sweet cigar-smell came into the room with Father. And of course he did not say the false, idle words.
"Corrie," he began instead, "do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.
"There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.
"God loves Karel--even more than you do--and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us his perfect way."
I did not know, as I listened to Father's footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this--places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”
― Corrie ten Boom, quote from The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
“I've discovered a way to stay friends forever -
There's really nothing to it.
I simply tell you what to do
And you do it!”
― Shel Silverstein, quote from A Light in the Attic
“Leo frowned at the giant's spire. "Can't we blow it up or something?"
"Without me, you do not have the power," Hera said. "You might as well try to destroy a mountain."
"Done that once today," Jason said.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Lost Hero
Angel
This Man Confessed
Eye of the Needle
Written on the Body
First Grave on the R...
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