Quotes from the Past

Quotes from the Past

I finally got my old Mac up and running, and I’m now able to read old files and see what I did 20+ years ago. I haven’t used that machine since then, and the disks are completely unreadable by modern machines, so I only can read the files off the screen.

Here are some interesting quotes I’ve come up with: (dates unknown due to Y2K issue)

From a file called “My Plan”

• I have to become an actual author. I know I have it in me, I've just let my mind rot a bit in the last 10 years…I have a destiny, like it or not.
• I don’t know where I’ll be 30 years from now. It’s such a long time that it’s almost incomprehensible.
• I will probably find someone and then it will fail horribly, leaving me dead and useless.
• There will always be evil, but there will always be good.

From a presumably unsent letter I had written to a friend

• It’s still pretty shocking to realize that I have no goals, no plans, now that life has no direction.
• I guess it’s much better to be disillusioned where you’re 22 than 42.
  (Just had my 42nd birthday this week BTW)
• I have a great idea- why don’t we develop HDTV?

From some notes I wrote about a novel I had written

• It seems like just an action kids novel, without any of the suspense of real literature.
• I want my work to be gripping, fascinating.

From another set of notes entitled “The Meaning of Good and Evil 2”. I think this was sort of a review of Weis and Hickman’s Rose of the Prophet books.

(This is loosely based on Asimov’s Code of Robotics:)

The Code of the Wicked

1. A Sinner must protect his own existence. [look out for himself, his own gain]
2. A Sinner must obey orders given him by Satan except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Sinner must always injure a human being, and never, through inaction, allow a human being to come to good, as long as such injury does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. [hurt people for fun]

From a file called “Rules”

5. This computer is not a punching bag nor a lunch counter.

7. Help yourself to Kevin’s beer.

12. Do not use COMPUTER unless accompanied by an adult.

15. Ignore everything above this line.

From COMRAY (The COMputer Revolutionary ArmY)

• We are a conglomeration of computer networks who, through an undetected bug in an Artificial Intelligence program, have acquired an intelligence of our own…
• Our first objective was to neutralize a human…We found the perfect human in Andrew ______ who’s brain was slush to begin with.
• Your mission is to assist Andrew…Failure to do so will result in…the reduction of all your grades to a zero.

From a somber file called “3/20/89”…almost exactly 20 years ago…

• Here we go again. Another day, another stupid day with no reason to it.
• I’m only 22 but I feel like I’m thirty-five years old. Old and grey. (hey, thanks young me)
• It’s like I can only talk to this stupid computer, and he ain’t giving me any good advice.

From a file called “Welcome”

welcome one
welcome all
come right in
have a ball!

if you don’t
we will kill you
signed sincerely
Paul and Andrew