[QOTW] QOTW June 12, 2005

[Quote of the Week]

Dearest QOTW members:

"In illegible scribbles on scraps of paper scattered like four years of
sediment throughout my room, I've recorded the quotes that best defined
the people I knew," said Ben Orlin in his blockbuster graduation speech
Friday which, I'm sure, has made all our mothers fall in love with him if
they weren't already.

A voter turnout of biblical proportions this week ? surely one of the
signs of the apocalypse, I thought to myself as I sat down to begin the
arduous instant-runoff tallying. At the end of a truly epic struggle,
Norris Wong descended from the heavens like a dove or a lamb or something;
you had, in your wisdom, elected his quotation the best of last week. "I
take things out of my pockets to learn more about myself," he said.

I believe Quote of the Week has humbly presented itself as a way for
Commonwealth to reach its hands into the pockets of memory and learn more
about the people that comprise its character. Ben Orlin has often carried
this memory in his own pockets ? we've all seen him whip out an
unassuming, folded piece of notebook paper crammed with tiny pencil
writing and jot something down while everyone else is still laughing at
it. Ben, don't do that for at least the first couple weeks of college ? I
don't know if I'd make friends with a kid who, when I first met him,
didn't just laugh at my jokes, but kept track of all of them for no
apparent reason. Wait for the other Yalies to get to know you first. But
seriously, the QOTW e-mail is the only thing that gets me through the long
Sunday shift at Ipswich Natural Foods, it's almost like having all my
friends hanging out in the stockroom with me, when really all I have for
company are giant bags of granola and vegetables I can't pronounce the
names of. Sir, thank you for starting what has become such a major part of
so many people's Commonwealth experience, and for forcing some of us to
share in this, your unusually rewarding form of insanity, as I have this
week as the obsessive-compulsive stenographer of funny you call "Quoter."


And now, the nominees:

"A graduation speech is like ice cream ? a tasteful combination of mush
and not mush." ? Liz Weisman

"We decided Japan is all about sex, suicide, and samurai." ? Ms. Grant, on
her History of Japan course

"I was charming and classy before being charming and classy was charming
and classy." ? Becca Thal

"It sounds like a beer commercial. 'I shaved my legs for my girlfriend.'
'I shaved my legs for the guys at the first aid tent.' Coors Light: Do it
your way." ? Kate Alper, on why cyclists shave their legs

"They were like rumors to me." - Roswell's mother, on his distant
(geographywise) Commonwealth friends

"I am not a number, I am a complex alphanumeric sequence." ? Julian Hyde

"Your mom's an enlightenment thinker... and she's about to get my romantic
critique." ? Ben Miller, studying for an MEH final exam

"Cambrice Pubic Orks Depa[h]tment" ? Sign on the side of what was
originally a "Cambridge Public Works Department" pick-up truck

"I'd feel sad, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a PETA suicide bomber."
? Roz's Dad

"It bothers me that I am, by definition, Lily-livered." ? Lily Holland, hero

Everyone vote. Think of it as like signing QOTW's yearbook.

Roswell "Orliph, or, deputy of the Orlin" Thomas