KGB Report by Kevin G. Barkes

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(July 2000 and earlier)

Friday, August 21, 2009
posted by KGB at 12:01 AM (permalink)

Yes. You're old.

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013

Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.

1. For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
2. Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
3. The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
5. Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
8. Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
9. They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
10. Rap music has always been main stream.
11. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
12. Someone has always been building something taller than the Willis (nee Sears) Tower in Chicago.
13. The KGB has never officially existed.
14. Text has always been hyper.
15. They never saw the "Scud Stud" (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders.)
16. Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
17. They have never had to "shake down" an oral thermometer.
18. Bungee jumping has always been socially acceptable.
19. They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P.
20. American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
21. Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled.
22. State abbreviations in addresses have never had periods.
23. The European Union has always existed.
24. McDonald's has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
25. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
26. Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
27. Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap.
28. The American health care system has always been in critical condition.
29. Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves.
30. Desperate smokers have always been able to turn to Nicoderm skin patches.
31. There has always been a Cartoon Network.
32. The nation's key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
33. Their folks could always reach for a Zoloft.
34. They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
35. Women have always outnumbered men in college.
36. We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
37. Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code.
38. Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
39. It's always been official: President Zachary Taylor did not die of arsenic poisoning.
40. Madonna's perspective on Sex has always been well documented.
41. Phil Jackson has always been coaching championship basketball.
42. Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
43. Kevin Costner has always been Dancing with Wolves, especially on cable.
44. There have always been flat screen televisions.
45. They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix.
46. Disney's Fantasia has always been available on video, and It's a Wonderful Life has always been on Moscow television.
47. Smokers have never been promoted as an economic force that deserves respect.
48. Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
49. Nobody has been able to make a deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
51. Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
52. They have never been Saved by the Bell
53. Someone has always been asking: "Was Iraq worth a war?"
54. Most communities have always had a mega-church.
55. Natalie Cole has always been singing with her father.
56. The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.
57. Elizabeth Taylor has always reeked of White Diamonds.
58. There has always been a Planet Hollywood.
59. For one reason or another, California's future has always been in doubt.
60. Agent Starling has always feared the Silence of the Lambs.
61. "Womyn" and "waitperson" have always been in the dictionary.
62. Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
63. There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
64. CDs have never been sold in cardboard packaging.
65. Avon has always been "calling" in a catalog.
66. NATO has always been looking for a role.
67. Two Koreas have always been members of the UN.
68. Official racial classifications in South Africa have always been outlawed.
69. The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
70. Vice presidents of the United States have always had real power.
71. Conflict in Northern Ireland has always been slowly winding down.
72. Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them.
73. Nobody has ever responded to "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up."
74. Congress could never give itself a mid-term raise.
75. There has always been blue Jell-O.

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Thursday, August 20, 2009
posted by KGB at 12:01 AM (permalink)

Quotes of the day

Boredom is rage spread thin.

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

The first duty of love is to listen.

-Paul Tillich

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
posted by KGB at 4:41 PM (permalink)

Finally...

The proper way to respond to right wing lunatics at town hall meetings.

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
posted by KGB at 12:46 AM (permalink)

Quotes of the day

Mr. Right is now a guy who hasn't been laid in fifteen years.

My ancestors wandered through the wilderness for 40 years because even in Biblical times, men would not stop to ask directions.

The latest fad, giving birth under water, may be less traumatic for the baby, but it's more traumatic for the other people in the pool.

The Vatican is against surrogate motherhood. Good thing they didn't have that rule when Jesus was born.

We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight, if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms.

When the sun comes up, I have morals again.

When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.

You never see a man walking down the street with a woman who has a little pot belly and a bald spot.

-Elayne Boosler

(slightly not safe for work)

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Monday, August 17, 2009
posted by KGB at 12:54 AM (permalink)

Quotes of the day

A hospital is no place to be sick.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

Don't pay any attention to the critics-don't even ignore them.

Don't worry about the war. It's all over but the shooting.

Gentlemen, include me out.

I can give you a definite perhaps.

I can tell you in two words: im possible.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

I don't want yes men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.

I had a terrific idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

I paid too much for it, but it's worth it.

I read part of it all the way through.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

If I entered into an agreement with that man, I would be sticking my head into a moose.

If I look confused it's because I'm thinking.

If Roosevelt were alive today, he's turn over in his grave.

It's absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities.

Keep a stiff upper chin.

Let's bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth century dialogue.

Let's have some new cliches.

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.

Our comedies are not to be laughed at.

Pictures are for entertainment. Messages should be delivered by Western Union.

Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.

Television has raised writing to a new low.

That's the trouble with directors: always biting the hand that lays the golden egg.

Too caustic? To hell with the cost. If it's a good picture, we'll make it.

We're dealing with facts, not realities.

What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax.

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

You've got to take the bitter with the sour.

Samuel Goldwyn

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Sunday, August 16, 2009
posted by KGB at 12:01 AM (permalink)

Quotes of the day

If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

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Copyright © 1987-2025 by Kevin G. Barkes
All rights reserved.
Violators will be prosecuted.
So there.
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...