April 30, 2008
"I'm kind of a neat, funny little guy, right?"
This semester, while in the Vonnegut seminar, I occasionally jotted down some of the comments made by Dr. John Reist. Listed below are the quotes I found in my notebook, if you can list another, put it in the comments and I'll add it to the list. But before the list of quotes, here is a possible definition for a term he used in class:
Flippydippin - (v) the way in which young women prepare to jump into a pool.
"I'm kind of a neat, funny little guy, right?"
"Every table participates in what? ... Tableness."
"Let's play suckface, but that's not being coy."
"The first honeymoon is Niagra, the second honeymoon is Viagra."
"Get up, there's plenty of time for sleeping in the grave."
"I'VE GOT A CRAMP IN MY LEG!"
"Life is a bitch, but some days it has puppies."
"What is sex? About twenty minutes."
"Kurt Vonnegut is SHABOOM! SHABOOM! SHABOOM!"
"I've got wrinkles, but they're Vonnegut wrinkles."
"When you get up in the morning, smile and get it over with."
"Dole-Rigiasiti Bingo!"
"Hey whoa man yeah man hey whoa."
"After their third cocktail, everyone looks - what? - sociable."
"Sexuality is about as meaningful as peanut butter."
"Cheap intimacy is worse than a Gatling Gun."
"Or call me Knob; that's what they called me in college."
"A picture of somebody's butt is not a picture of somebody's elbow."
"[Singing] Silent night, holy night, INCOMING!"
"Shooby-doin the chow chow."
"Go get a job, Larry. Go suck an egg. Go hug a nut."
"If you have an English teacher who doesn't know the answer, you might as well major in spaghetti."
"Why do you wear your hair that way? Hey nice wig."
"It's enough to make a monkey bite its mother."
"You haven't tasted anything until you've tasted Pennsylvania Dutch sticky buns."
"I've got principles. If you don't like them I've got other principles."
"If you read your autobiography and didn't know it was yours, you'd be bored to death."
"This chooch!"
"I'm gonna die anyway, so why didn't it happen last year?"
"You don't have to been-there to done-that."
"Today we're looking at ... Soul on Ice, by Elder Cleavage."
"Fiddler! Messiah! Let's get packing!"
"You're right to hate religion. Religious people are boring, arrogant, or both."
"The Hellsdale Collision. The Hillsdale Concussion. What is this, a college?"
"Someone asked Sophocles once about what sex was like at age eighty-three. He said, 'I'm glad to have that monkey off my back.'"
"People who have ennui are what? Indescribable sloths." [points to self]
"If you can't figure out your emotions on your own, you're either a woman, a Christian, or both."
"Columbus was Italian, Catholic, and a sailor. How you can be all three at once, I don't know."
[To a history major who recently got engaged] "History, Hillsdale, and what's the third strike? You!"
"We used to call happy people gay. Now it means you're a homosexual. Many homosexuals are not gay. They're not happy. They're miserable, in fact. And it's not all their fault. Is it?"
"Wha' happened?"
"Is there something wrong with me? I can't find chalk."
"Did you know John Calvin had migraine headaches and spit blood? The only way he survived is he convinced himself it was predestined."
"This is Wendell. This is what he did. Now, he dead."
"When nobody bathes, nobody notices."
"You need to get married, fall out of love, and proceed to your funeral."
"It's always sad when people take their faith seriously."
"Every time my wife leaves me, she comes back. You know why? One: I got lots of money, and two: I got forearms like railroad ties! Would you leave a guy with THESE?"
"In a Puritan cemetery is the gravestone of an eight-month-old infant. It says, 'Since I was so early done for / I wonder what I was begun for.' And you say Puritans had no sense of humor."
"Let me take the other glove off."
"You know what's so great about harassment? The her-ass part."
"I'm not much to look at, but I sure am provocative and challenging, eh?"
"That [flares nostrils] was my siren call to my wife."
"If everyone said what he wanted to, right now, civilization would collapse."
"Shizookum is Jewish for 'Don't.'"
"Bernice, bobbing, barbershop, bathing, BITCH!"
"Why do I know everything and you don't?"
"Please excuse my long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one."
"Do you know that awful song? Sing with me: 'Jesus loves the little children, / All the children of the world, / Chinks and niggers, kikes and wops, / Jesus thinks the kids are tops.' What's wrong? You stopped singing?"
"I look cool in white knickers."
"If I ever write a novel, I'd call it 'Road Kill.'"
"I've got to check my plumbing."
"It wouldn't make any sense if the world didn't make any sense."
"If my name was Atticus Finch, I'd shoot myself."
"Flakey, flunky, flukey, flu."
"Skank bags."
"That's funnier than a truck full of dead babies."
"Six eagles for every student."
"Cats -- meow, scratchy, scratchy, scratch."
"Some people think Vonnegut is one big, fat juicy nihilist."
"Well, I like to make love and I like to laugh, and I'm working on a way to do both."
"It's not hard to love a snail. Some people eat them."
"Revolution is coming. It's in a phone booth."
"When an 83-year-old woman says that to you, it's time to back up the truck."
"Hot black coffee and junk magazines."
"I know that sounds seixst, but studies have been done."
"To me it was like watching somboedy go to the bathroom."
"I haven't done my herbarium."
"I've spooned with so many women."
"Monkeys at the monkey house play with each other's...ear lobes."
"At a Bennigan's or a Hooligan's or whatever..."
"High school girls are...flag twirlers...oh, sexy to death!"
"Hamlet is not about Wendy's hamburgers."
"Save yourself from self-slaughter: read Kurt Vonnegut."
"Midland? Hey woah, I wonder what kind of art show they have there!"
"Harvard is the Hillsdale of the East."
"We blacks and Jews gotta stay together!"
"You should wash your hands. It's hygienically and Biblically okay, I guess."
"The Greek word for soul is 'neutere. Or in this picture's case, it's 'nuder.'"
"There's always windows in buildings that are civilized."
"You know what the pastor room is like? It's filled with wine bottles. And potato chips."
"In heaven there is no beer; that's why we drink it here."
[in reference to the film Splash, with Tom Hanks] "How can you make a banal movie about a mermaid!?"
"Listen Larry, Winston Churchill did not die for your sins."
"Ever have a nightmare where mosquitoes are coming after you? How about your college professor?"
"You have to know what sleeve garters are for or else you're not a human being."
"You always have to be in the mood or in the nude."
"Being a pastor is good beer money."
"A young prude is worse than an old prude."
[in reference to a Cuneo]: "He's going into the priesthood instead of the Reisthood...probably a good choice."
"Anyone here's mom perpetually virginal? As your dads. [short pause] Wait, no don't ask your dads!"
A note from one of Reist's past seminary students, Rick Behrens:
Don't know if anyone looks at this blog anymore, but I was a seminary student of Reist's at CBTS. Some of his gems have stuck with me. "Fundamentalism is neither fun nor mental." "God bless you, godamnit!" From his daughter about the joy of a good crap, "Daddy, how come when I'm about to poop it feels like Christmas is coming?"
by Chase at 10:39 PM |
14
comments (create) - (View)
