To Quote Myself

Back when I was smart, a time some still argue was never, I could occasionally come up with a good thought. The delivery of it was poor and slurred, spoken from lips on a face riddled with acne and blotches... but there were ideas in my mumbling. This one fact often led me to me being confused as intelligent. I had a feeling these thoughts and ideas had been said before (more eloquently and with brilliant prose) by more educated people, but freshly repeating greatness was enough for me to take a small measure of pride. I had come up with my thought just as the the more learned and wiser yokels had done years before me. I'd often spend hours coming up with an original idea and then try to destroy it by finding a more appropriately phrased version.

It was the most fun, self-defeating process outside of television.

I had a particular favorite I came up with. 'Those who can't think, quote.' I so was amused by it that it later went in as part of my email signature 'Those who can't think, quote. - Me'. Really, I still get a chuckle from that. What a pompous ass I am.

But this morning I found something that ripped the roof off my Hong-Kong knock-off idea factory. Not just a re-tooling of my long held belief that quoting is done by the dumb, but a version of it that mine seem like the piss-poor product of alcohol and desperation.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

If there was ever an emotional equivalent to stepping into a pair of soiled trousers, this was it.