Current mood:	contemplative
Current music:	"Boots and Sand" by Cat Stevens, Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton (!)

Boy, giraffes are selfish …
Sorry I haven’t been writing here more often, but it’s been kind of crazy lately. Besides getting an issue of Beatlefan out, I had to deal with the latest reorganization at work (following more staff reductions) in which I unexpectedly ended up as a fulltime blogger — about University of Georgia sports. It’s something I’d been doing in my spare time for the past three and a half years, and the big bosses decided there were enough Bulldog fans out there to make it a full-time gig. So that’s been taking up a lot of my time. You can check out the Junkyard Blawg as it’s called (a reference to both the famed Junkyard Dog defenses in the Vince Dooley era and a play on UGA fans’ penchant for calling their team the Dawgs) at:
http://blogs.ajc.com/junkyard-blawg/

Just beware of some of the comments; the AJC likes us to leave it a fairly open forum, and some rival teams’ fans (particularly the more juvenile ones who follow Georgia Tech) are prone to get on there and act out, as kindergarten teachers would say.

It’s been an eye-opening experience going over to the digital side after nearly 35 years in print. I’ve learned about SEO (search engine optimization), and about just what a big deal social media are these days in journalistic circles. Everybody in the media is getting on the Twitter bandwagon, even though that fad seems to be fading somewhat already, with statistics showing that about 60 percent of Twitter users quit after a month. Which is no surprise to me. I’m just sayin’.

Facebook is also getting a lot of attention, and that seems to not only have more staying power than Twitter but more appeal to folks my age (which probably means the younger generation soon will be pushing off to explore newer social media frontiers). For now, though, it’s kind of cool that my kids and my brothers and some of my friends are “poking” each other and sharing photos and observations. People use their “status” notations to celebrate good times, lament hard ones and to mark milestones. My son’s most recent entry from May 6, for instance, notes “Bill King has just turned in his final assignment as a student at the University of Georgia.”

Sigh. We watched with pride last Saturday as he got his master’s degree in public administration, and in July he’ll start work at the GAO in Washington, D.C.

Anyway, one of the areas of Facebook profiles that I find most interesting is where people list their favorite quotations. Often, they’re funny. Sometimes touching. Occasionally thought-provoking. And they give you a little peek at what that particular person finds worthy of remembering.

So here’s a sampling of some of my own favorite quotations that I’ve gathered over the years, going all the way back to my college days and opening with one of the best pieces of advice my Dad ever gave me:

"Whatever you do, don't ever buy a plaid suit." — William D. King

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." — John Lennon

"Sunrise doesn't last all morning, a cloudburst doesn't last all day" — George Harrison

"You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer." — Paul McCartney

"From what?" — Mollie Parry King (my Mom) on being asked for the first time after she’d moved from Britain to the rural South, "Are you saved?"

"Oh, goddammit, we forgot the silent prayer." — President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Cabinet meeting

"The main thing to remember is never to let go of the vine." — Johnny Weismuller

"If you're going to write about a bear, bring on the bear!" — unknown editor, quoted to me by famed editor Byron Dobell when I was interviewing him

"Take off your glasses, this could get dangerous." — William Thornton King (at age 5, about to challenge his father to a wrestling match)

"I can resist anything but temptation." — Oscar Wilde

"Once you get rid of integrity, the rest is a piece of cake" — J.R. Ewing

"The ball ain't heavy." — Herschel Walker, on being asked if it was tiring running the ball more than 30 times in a game

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well, I have others." — Groucho Marx

"Boy, giraffes are selfish." — Bernard P. Fife, M.D.

"Eighty percent of success is showing up." — Woody Allen

"Blood will tell; breedin' will out." — Bernard P. Fife, M.D.

"It's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy." — George Carlin

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." — Mark Twain

"The only good thing about that Cuban prick was his Cuban prick." — Lucille Ball, talking once about ex-husband Desi Arnaz

"I hate spunk!" — Lou Grant

"I was with the Filipino army at the final advance on Reykjavik." — Doctor Who

"So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So, we go. And it's closed. So there's me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shop owner and his son ... that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Ozzy went onstage and did a great show." — Del Preston (the aging roadie in “Wayne’s World 2”)

"I knowed you was Russian the minute you got in my cab." — American taxi driver to my Mom, who had just told him she was from Wales

"Born without a shirt and wore out a thousand." — George Washington King (my great grandfather; this saying usually followed him wiping his mouth on his sleeve after having taken a swig of something)

"I hate hate." — William D. King

Feel free to share your own favorite quotes or have your say about anything in this column. Just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal.