quotables

Anthony Bourdain guest blogs and tells us about Rachel Ray:

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” ... Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations... Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….

And along the same lines from this guy named (dis)pencer up in MSP:

you have to be one of cyclings "hardmen" to win the big spring classics.
you can't expect to survive if you are prone to falling down, or if you really enjoy disappointment and making excuses.

... looks like I'm in an unforgiving mood this afternoon, and ain't havin' none o' dat mediocrity goin' on.