User:	overheardnyc
Date:	2008-07-07 04:00
Subject:	He Just Fell Off My Radar Screen
Security:	Public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015322.html

Gay #1: Oh em gee, the cashier is like üober-hot.
Gay #2: I know, right?
(they both look at the cashier)
Gay #1: Sucks he's a total straighty.
Gay #2: Well, at least he has a nice ass.
Gay #1: Yeah, I guess.

--Union Square American Eagle

Overheard by: Figs

User: literaryquotes (posted by aesctreow) Date: 2008-07-07 00:34 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
...
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing -- which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical beloved. It finds the deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out, but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved. Had I known that my wife was dead, I think I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying."Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death"

User: greatpoets (posted by bemkah) Date: 2008-07-07 17:14 Subject: Pocket Poem Security: Public

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped 
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this 
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.

- Ted Kooser.

User: literaryquotes (posted by manjumymanji) Date: 2008-07-07 01:56 Subject: Franny and Zooey -- J.D. Salinger Security: Public

"This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one."

User:	overheardnyc
Date:	2008-07-07 02:00
Subject:	At Least It Complements Your Syrupy Sweetness
Security:	Public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015321.html

Woman in stall #1: I hate it when this happens!
Woman in stall #2: What?
Woman in stall #1: These pants! They looked so nice but they flatten my ass. My ass is flat now. I look like pancake ass!

--Fitting Room, Staten Island

User:	overheardnyc
Date:	2008-07-07 00:00
Subject:	Since the Third Person Never Showed
Security:	Public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015320.html

Ghetto boy: Wait, you two had a threesome?
Ghetto girl #1: It was mad awkward, yo!
Ghetto girl #2: Fo' reals!

--Atlantic & Hoyt

User: literaryquotes (posted by agentsquirrel) Date: 2008-07-07 01:00 Subject: The Sirens of Titans- Kurt Vonnegut Security: Public

"The legend was this:
Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every
time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough.
 So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have anypurpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, 'Tralfamadore.' "

User:	apod
Date:	2008-07-07 04:30
Subject:	Apollo 17 VIP Site Anaglyph
Security:	Public

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080706.html

Get out your red/blue glasses

User: mathematics (posted by paladinmt) Date: 2008-07-06 22:56 Subject: I call bullshit Security: Public

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

X-posted. Sorry to those of you recieving spam.

User: literaryquotes (posted by 5dollarlola) Date: 2008-07-06 23:49 Subject: fight club by chuck palahniuk Security: Public

I've met god across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but Gods got this all wrong.
We are not special.
We are not crap or trash, either.
We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.
And God says "No, thats not right."
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You cant teach God anything.

User: photojournals (posted by jnphotos) Date: 2008-07-06 19:55 Subject: taken on the fourth of july Security: Public

I'm sure everyone is tired of firework photos by now but here are mine plus some more from the same day but not necessarily holiday related.
( lots of extremely cool photos that you want to look at. )

User: greatpoets (posted by acreofbones) Date: 2008-07-06 22:55 Subject: "Here Is What..." // Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Security: Public

Here is what is happening to me:
my old friend doesn't come to visit,
and in idle vanity
come various folk, nor those who should.
And he
goes about somewhere not with those he should
and he understands that too,
and our discord is not cleared up,
and both of us suffer from this.

Here is what is happening to me:
Not the right girl comes to visit,
she puts her hands on my shoulders
and steals me from another.
And that one --
tell me for God's sake,
on whose shoulders does she put her hands?
That one
from whom I was stolen,
in vengeance also will begin to steal.

She won't respond immediately this way,
but will live in a struggle with herself
and unaware will select
someone superfluous for her.
Oh, how many nervous
and unhealthy,
unnecessary involvements,
unnecessary friendships!

Something rabidly desperate in me!
Oh, somebody,
come,
break up the conjunction
of people alien to one another
and the estrangement
of souls that are kindred.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko. | Circa 1957.
Translated by Albert C. Todd.

User:	overheardnyc
Date:	2008-07-06 22:00
Subject:	A Perfectly Rational Response to a Man Coming Down Your Chimney
Security:	Public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015319.html

Woman #1: What's wrong with Eddie*?
Woman #2: Oh, Eddie* gets claustrophobic in the city.
Little boy: That means he's afraid of Santa Claus!

--39th St & 6th Ave

User: literaryquotes (posted by xkriss) Date: 2008-07-06 21:32 Subject: one of my favorites... Security: Public

..and I'm not even religious.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9

User: literaryquotes (posted by lungs_of_love) Date: 2008-07-06 21:26 Subject: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia Security: Public

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

- Marya Hornbacher

User:	overheardnyc
Date:	2008-07-06 20:00
Subject:	Nothing Like Being Double-Teamed by the Classics
Security:	Public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015318.html

Drunk customer: What kind of drunk return policy do you have?
Cashier: It's a 14-day return policy.
Drunk customer: That's not much of a drunk policy. Most guys get drunk and wake up next to women they regret the next day. Me? I wake up next to Dostoievsky and Dickens after a bender. I love New York!

--Barnes & Noble, Park Slope

Overheard by: Random