Callahan's Place 10 - Off The Wall At Callahan's (v5.0) Read Free

on The Wall a full decade before the debate over one's Right To Die got going. I've checked with Jake, and he confirms that the choice by a terminal patient to terminate his or her anguish does not, in his opinion, constitute "suicide."

 
     
     
     
     
    There is so much yammer-yammer on the air and in print these days that nobody could keep up with it, much less remember it.   I mean, look at Richard Nixon.   There’s always somebody who didn’t get the word.  
    — Joe

 
     
     
     
     
    The most important step in mapmaking is to throw out all the old maps you have in the glove compartment.   Forget all the reports of earlier explorers.   You can’t discover America if you keep shying away from the edge of the world.   And if you do find it, you’ll waste years asking to be taken to Kublai Khan.
    — Priscilla (last name unknown)

 
     
     
     
     
    Cheering someone up is a little like breast-feeding, or good sex: mutually satisfactory.
    — Jake

 
     
     
     
     
    Pregnant women aren’t sick.
    — Doc Webster

 
     
     
     
     
    If you can’t cut the mustard, you can always lick the jar.
    —Mary Callahan

 
     
     
     
    We’ve got a world in which physical miracles are commonplace—and nobody’s happy.   We’ve got what it takes to feed all the billions of us—and half of us are starving.   You can show a dozen guys murdering each other on TV, but you can’t ever show two people making love.   A naked blade is reckoned less obscene than a naked woman.   Isn’t it about time we started trying to get a handle on love, from any and all directions ?
    — Jake

 
     
     
     
     
    Get it right, you’re a star.   Get it half-right, you’re a gas giant.  
    — Joe

 
     
     
     
     
    "Champagne is a barometer of happiness.   There is a sort of morosity everywhere."
     
    —Yves Bernard, chairman of Moet & Chandon, commenting on poor sales

 
     
     
     
     
    The delusion that one’s sexual pattern is the Only Right Way To Be   is probably the single most common sexual psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim’s fault.   You cannot acquire this delusion by observation of reality.
    — Lady Sally

 
     
     
     
     
    A shrink’s office from which laughter is not heard as often as tears ought to shut down.
    — Jake

 
     
     
     
     
    Never been to a shrink.   What could be sillier than a priest who doesn’t believe in the soul?
    — Stephen Gaskin

 
     
     
     
     
    Where I come from, anyone who says "Excuse me" is a human being.  
    — Joe

 
     
     
     
     
    Old age is not for sissies.
    — Larry Van Cott

 
     
     
     
     
    The only kind of payment that always guarantees a handsome return is paying attention.
    —Lady Sally

 
     
     
     
     
    It’s amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.
    —Commodore Aaron Sheffield

 
     
     
     
     
    People who wear glasses are lucky; we have stars on rainy nights.
    —Jake

 
     
     
     
     
    Improving morale is simultaneously one of the noblest and most intelligently selfish things a person can do.
    Degrading morale is simultaneously one of the sleaziest and most stupidly self-destructive things a person can do.
    Guess which pays better?
    —Long-Drink McGonnigle

 
     
     
     
     
    I must have missed something: if a guy has truly absolute   power, then what could you possibly corrupt him with?  
         Acton got it backward: what engenders corruption is paranoia, the perception of inadequate power.   Absolute power renders you absolutely immune to corruption.
    —Mike

 
     
     
     
     
    Hip humor: laughing at a fat girl–cruelty pretending to be fun.
    —Mike

 
     
     
     
     
    Popular myth to the contrary, drink is not really a good drug for pain.   That is, it can numb physical pain, but will not blunt the edge of sorrow; it can help that latter only by making it easier for a man to curse or weep.  
         But alcohol is great for happiness: it can actually