'Bred Crumbs

Words from the Attic

Two households become one, and room must be made. Thus, nostalgia is unearthed, from boxes marked PHOTOS and MEMORABILIA and STUFF and THINGS THAT NEED SORTING. Before it gets sorted, or more likely just dropped into a new box of cherished flotsam and beloved jetsam, it gets lingered over, and shared with someone fond enough of you to nod and say "uh-huh" periodically as necessary despite not having been around for the associated experience.

In that spirit of imposed-upon tolerance, I present selections from my college journalism school's "Book of Infamous Quotations."

For some reason, the people I always wind up sinking my roots among feel the compulsion to "capture" (as they say in PowerPointania) the oddities we sometimes speak. The quotes here are a mix of things said unwittingly (usually by someone sleep-deprived) and things said perfectly wittingly but among a group of budding journalists, people who by nature are both sharp-brained and wise-assed enough to immediately rip them from their context.

• "Anything to please an oncoming freshman."
• "He's been working to unweaken it. In fact, he's been working to strengthen it."
• "I bet I can get you in the sack faster than you can get me in the sack."
• "Take a load of this Dick. No, that's take a load of this, comma, Dick."
• "You have to ride the train all night long, and you don't see any daylight until whenever the sun comes up."
• "We don't like your pecker." [a complaint about the noise of a manual typewriter]

Some of the quotes originated from outside our circle:

• "My bowels of compassion are reaching out." – a TV preacher
• "I'm very proud of my campaign. It's a campaign of grassroots – something I was brought up in." – the gubernatorial incumbent, in a radio debate
• "The bell just sounded as it rang at ringside." – a wrestling announcer

There are two from the janitor's husband, a bigot of the sort I didn't think really existed outside Norman Lear sitcoms:

• "Them Puerto Ricans – they can speak English, you know, but they just start talkin' that Puerto Rican and you can't understand what they're saying."
• "You're Italian, aren't you? I used to go out with an Italian girl – or Spanish or whatever you want to call it."

Then there's my favorite, one I bore witness to, which has stayed lodged in my memory all these years:

• "The city's nothing but red lights when you gotta pee."

Because it was true.

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At Low Low Prices!

To wit, the drawbacks of automatic product placement. This morning, the Chronicle's online coverage of Hurricane Isabel's hitting the Outer Banks contained this sponsored link on the side:

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Nuggets Without Reason

At work, a bowl overflowing with what appear to be uncooked but unfrozen tater tots sits unattended on the kitchen counter, quietly disturbing me.

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Parade of 'Holes

I live in a 140-plus-unit building that has, at most, 11 guest parking places on weekends. Four of these will be taken up for months by the construction company doing major renovations on our building.

These spaces are clearly marked as reserved for our building, with guest permits required. But that didn't stop anyone who was checking out an open house at the guest-space-less building next door, many of whom proceeded to park wherever the hell they wanted: our few guest spaces, the fire lane, whatever. It made me wish I had signs prepared to slap on their windshields, reading:

DEAR OPEN HOUSE VISITOR:

THANKS FOR IGNORING OUR PARKING RULES.

WE CAN'T WAIT TO HAVE YOU AS A NEIGHBOR!

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Well, They Watch CSI: Miami

Don't you think that if CBS started showing old Hawaii Five-O reruns and slapping the title CSI: Hawaii on 'em, they'd bag viewers by the millions?

(This idea born while watching such a rerun on the Hallmark Channel, with surprise guest star ... a young Christopher Walken!)

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