T-Shirts for Scorpios


A. The Originals


If you love something, set it free. If it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it.

I'm not playing hard to get. I am hard to get.

It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you look playing the game.

I think I could fall madly in bed with you.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Nothing was ever accomplished by a reasonable person.

A simple lie is easier to believe than a complex truth.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, treat everything like a nail.

Hi, I'm a nice person learning to be vicious, cruel, mean, and nasty. Is it okay if I practice on you?

You can't win, you can't break even, you can't quit.

There is nothing more restful than taking orders from fools.

You'll see it when you believe it.

If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk.

You can be sincere and still be wrong.

If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me.

The map is not the terrain.



B. The Additions


You're supposed to break their hearts, darling. They're not supposed to break yours.
--Found written down near my TV. Probably from an old movie, but I don't remember which one.

All Stressed Out and No One To Choke

I am a snowball in hell.

A hopeless romantic in a male chauvinist world.

You don't have to know arithmetic
To know that you and I would click.
My heart tells me this,
Your lips were meant to kiss,
And it's dark on Observatory Hill.

How gently failure can happen
--Tennessee Williams?

Thus, the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude, and the evidence-givers too untrustworthy.
--James Joyce, I think from Ulysses, possibly the walk on the beach. Maybe Samuel Beckett?

The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action sacramentally and be free from all attachment to results.

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while
A great wind is bearing me across the sky.
-- Ojibwa Saying

The dream of every poem is to be a myth.
--Galway Kinnell

Trust those who seek the truth, but distrust those who have found it.
--Andre Gide

Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?
--Columnist Sydney Harris?

I don't pray for justice. If I get justice, I'm in big trouble. I pray for mercy.

The strong give up and leave. The weak give up and stay.
--from a Hall and Oates song. The reverse might also be true.

Be careful, or I might include you in my plans.

I don't need a great deal of love ... but I do need a steady supply.

"...ordinary people leading desperate lives."
-- The Great Gatsby. Used for the title of Judith Guest's Ordinary People

Let the Wookie win.

OUR LADY OF ODD COUNSEL
--misprint in St. Josephat church bulletin

"We have joined the caravan, you might say, at a certain point;
we will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see
all that we would like to see
or learn all that we would like to see,
or learn all that we hunger to know."
--Loren Eiseley, "The Immense Journey"

We often forget the power of boredom as a revolutionary force.

Anyone who doesn't fail on a regular basis isn't trying things that are
difficult. If we never fail, it means our dreams are small.

the friend who understands you, creates you.
--Romain Rolland

Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.

..."I remember reading C. S. Lewis for the first time, 'Surprised by Joy',
and how, looking inside himself, he found 'a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of
ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds.' I felt elated
and absolved. I had thought that the people one admired, the kind, smart
people of the world, were not like that on the inside, were different from
me and, say, Toulouse-Lautrec."
from __Bird by Bird__, by Anne Lamott

>>"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short
visit, not knowing why, yet seeming to divine a purpose. From the stand
point of daily living however, there is one thing we do know: that man is
here for the sake of other men...above all, for those upon whose smile and
well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown
souls with whose fate we are connected with a bond of sympathy. Many times
a day I realize how much my own inner and outer life is built upon the
labors of my fellow men both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert
myself, in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still
receiving."
--Albert Einstein

When friends ask, there is no tomorrow.

We're here. We're weird. Get used to it.
-- David Oaks

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are
any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
-- Howard Aiken

Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): "Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

Gil Scott Heron-- "B" Movie
"Just keep repeating
That none of this is real..."

Q: How many Newton users does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Foux! there to eat lemons, axe gravy soup.

Q: How many MicroSoft vice presidents does it take to change a
light bulb?
A: Eight. One to work the light bulb, and seven to make sure
Microsoft gets US$2 for every light bulb ever changed anywhere
in the world.

merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.


There ought to be a law.
In fact there is a law.
Law only works if you use it.
-- Carl?

I can't blame my past anymore. I have to take the responsibility
for my present and future. I can choose safety or adventure.
I am scared of the hurt and head for cover, but once there,
I am resentful and unsatisfied. I don't want to be there. I read
a phrase in a book by Andras Angyal, which I keep in mind: "Anxiety
heralds challenge". Just that. Challenge met = mastery = self-confidence.
Now when the stomach knots hit, I (try to) think: if I overcome
this, I know I can do one more thing. The plaque on my wall
says: "A ship in a harbour is safe. But that is not what ships
are built for."
-- KayB

"In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed."
-- Charles Louis de Montesquieu

Our People, the Tsalagi, believe that if a man is hungry and knocks at
your door, you open it and feed him....You do not ask the extent of or
reason for his hunger. Perhaps this thought might apply as we discuss
the extent and/or reasons of those who seek to learn the ways of the
People. It is not for us to judge this....but rather, speak only for
oneself. I thank you for hearing my words.
-- Brooke Craig

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify
all things in your life.
--Tecumseh

We all begin in sleep and that's where we find our end. Even in between,
sleep keeps trying to claim us. To stay awake in life as much as possible --
that may be the point.
- Louise Erdreich

Genetically determined behavior affected by
environmental features seems to be the final arbiter of human
behavior. No matter how well equipped we are to cerebrate, our
minds are in direct service to our emotions...
-- Marlon Brando

When they come for the innocent without crossing over your body,
CURSED be your religion and your life
-- Brendan Walsh

El amor es fuego, pero con el no se cuece el puchero.

I drank WHAT?!?!?!?!?!
-- Socrates

The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make
them unsafe.
-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia.

Freedom is the fire that burns away illusion.
-- James Baldwin

Basho said to his disciple: "When you have a staff, I will give it to you. When you have no staff, I will take it away."

Our tribal stories [are] frequently discredited by Western historians as 'merely myth.' I have always found this fascinating. An entire body of knowledge can be dismissed because it was not written down, while material written by obviously biased men is readily accepted as reality.
-- Wilma Mankiller (first woman Cherokee tribal chief)

A frog was mired deep in the rut of an old muddy road. As hard as they
tried, his friends couldn't pull him out. After exhausting all their efforts,
they sadly gave up and left. But the next day they found their friend by the
pond, joyful and very pleased with himself. "How did you get free?" they
asked in astonishment. "We thought you couldn't get out of that rut."
"I couldn't," explained the frog, "but a truck was coming, and I had to."

"People think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it."
-- Marsha Norman, playwright

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
-- Granville Hicks

In psychology, there is a concept called "idiosyncratic credit," It
means that, over time, within any group, you can build up credit by
being helpful, entertaining, interesting, kind . . . generally behaving
as a person of good sense and good will. Then, if you do something that
annoys people, they will probably just shrug it off and the world will
keep turning. You are, in essence, drawing on the credit you've built
over time. This can't go on forever, of course. If you keep screwing
up, you'll eventually use up your credit.


It is sometimes difficult to know that you don't want to read something
before you have read it.
-- John T.

The main thing is
to keep the main thing
the main thing.
-- Mr. Henry Breckenridge

I live on an insignificant planet orbiting a small yellow sun in an outlying
spiral arm of the Galaxy. "Mostly harmless", except for the digital watches.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. -- Emerson
Aaeeyaaeeyaaeeyah! -- Tarzan

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That's why we put these stories in each other's memories.
-- Barry Lopez

Imagine a Carthage sown with salt and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water -- peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries
-- Marilynne Robinson, HOUSEKEEPING
[For those of us familiar with the movie, this passage in the book is from the trip Irene and Sylvia take in the rowboat, up the lake to the farmhouse of the fey children.]

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.
-- Renata Adler

I have finally figured out who I am.
I am a Thomas Merton-ish renegade Buddhist-Catholic student of William Blake via Walker Percy and Existentialism.
In other words, I'm a TM RBC SWB WPE, more commonly know as a Tom Rabbit sweeper and wiper, an offshoot of the 19th century "sweepers," who were best known for the devoutness of their housekeeping.

Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the
computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with
Apple.
-- Byte, December 1994

They've now moved the computer into the psych ward, for more
specialized treatment. Seems to be suffering from winter depression. The
very last message sent was: "We are currently down--sorry for the inconvenience."

Cyberspace, in its present condition, has a lot in common
with the 19th Century West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally
and legally ambiguous, verbally terse (unless you happen to
be a court stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for
grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place,
but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent,
sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a
perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about
liberty.
-- John Perry Barlow, Crime and Puzzlement


Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was
young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of
course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I
shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days
are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of
the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence
fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big
Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.
-- Norman Maclean

Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

If you find yourself in a deep hole, the first thing to do is -- stop digging.
-- anon.

It might help us if we remember that, for many of us who have white
ancestors, those ancestors frequently came here not as conquerors and
opportunists but as ethnic, economic, religious, and political outcasts who
were driven out of their previous "homelands." Similar dislocations and
forced migrations (and the enmities they caused) were part of Native history
long before the arrival here of whites.
So many of us here are mixed already, both native/white and tribal/tribal.
We know that blood alone is not what defines us as a people. Our history
teaches us of the strength that comes when we bring new people into our
community, and and that comes when we form alliances with others.
We might look for guidance at the history of the Creek Confederation --
Muskogees, Alabamas, Nachez, Uchees, and others -- or at the history of the
Seminoles, or at the historical inclusiveness of the Cherokees. Mixed bloods
like Tecumseh, McGillivrey, Ross, and Weatherford have been among our great
messengers. We might look for our allies among those who wish to share and
honor our culture and our community.
We need not vanish as our bloodlines become diluted and mixed. We have a
great opportunity to teach and to bring others to our culture, and we know
many people who need to be taught. Some we will make members of our
community, some we will make into allies who honor our cultures. It is a
great strength to imagine ourselves as teachers.

To others who want Native people to "get over it" I will say that
suppression of Native people is not something that is in the distant past-
It still exists today in many forms.
How can this encoded message of "not worthy of existence" be washed from
my body's memory? It is most difficult when the message is still in
existence, ingrained in the basic infrastructure of the policies of
government, education, Medical and legal entities today, constantly
reminding me that as a Native woman I am less than human being.
I have to remind myself- If the bitterness and blaming is so loud in
my head, then I will not hear instructions from Creator. If I am so busy
looking at the fault of others- I will not be able to see the path of my
own walk- I will stumble and fall. If I am so busy thinking about the
faults of others I be distracted from knowing myself. The real enemy is
within myself- the real friend is within myself.
-- Noqua

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
--Rebecca West (1913)

Don't give up five minutes before the miracle happens.
- Mohammad Ali

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in
each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
-- Longfellow (1819-1892)


The essays I wrote for the classes she taught were deeply
personal, detailing my life as a depressive. We didn't come across problems.
Why? Because The "academic" remained in our interaction. I wrote my
deepest and darkest; she acted as editor. Sure, she listened to my rantings
and ravings, but she listened not to offer emotional support (a little,
maybe), but to find a way to make my ravings and rantings into art, my
writing.
-- Mary Vu

I have been too busy to crash ....
-- Jo Donnelly

Take my advice -- I'm not using it!

I won't slap you with a trout today, but it doesn't mean
I don't care . . . !!!

I believe in Peace, bitch."
-- Tori Amos

SUBJ: Things To Keep In Mind (Collage 123)
Be nice to your kids. They'll choose your nursing home.
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder...
There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count & those who can't.
Why is "abbreviation" such a long word?
Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
For people who like peace and quiet: a phoneless cord.
I can see clearly now, the brain is gone...
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Mental Floss prevents Moral Decay.
Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full.
I'd explain it to you, but your brain would explode.
I don't have a solution but I admire the problem.
If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished!
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock.
If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.
If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary forms.
It's not hard to meet expenses--they're everywhere.
Help Wanted: Telepath. You know where to apply.
Look out for #1. Don't step in #2 either.
Budget: A method for going broke methodically.
Car service: If it ain't broke, we'll break it.
Shin: A device for finding furniture in the dark.
Do witches run spell checkers?
Dame bramaged.
What has four legs and an arm? A happy pit bull.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

You'd feel better if you didn't feel guilty about treating me so badly!

My own view is that those who first attributed a sacred character to [madness] were like the magicians, purifiers, charlatans, and quacks of our own day, men who claim great piety and superior knowledge. Being at a loss, and having no treatment which would help, they concealed and sheltered themselves behind superstitions and called this illness sacred, in order that their utter ignorance might not be manifest."
--Hippocrates?

Remind yourself that what matters is the telling, not the response. The telling is an act of bravery more than an act of self-revelation, and each time we tell we grow stronger.

i just want to adore something not from a distance any more.
-- edi

LAW XII: It costs a lot to build bad products.
LAW XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of
the cost and two-thirds of the problems.
-- Norman R. Augustine

Sturdily rooted in the past, the tale's
branches spread out through the days to come.
The many stories that make up its substance
unfold from bud to leaf to dry memory and back again, event connecting
event like the threadwork of a spider's web, so that each creature of
the world plays its part, understanding only aspects of the overall
narrative, and perceiving, each with its particular talents, only
glimpses of the Great Mystery that underlies it all.
-- Moonheart by Charles de Lint

Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.
-- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbacher

The following are from country and western songs collected by Larry Sons and Doug Todd:
I don't mind getting burned if I can just be near the glow.
It took a hell of a man to take my Ann but it sure didn't take him long.
When I'm alone, I'm in bad company.
I don't know whether to kill myself or go bowling.
How come my dog don't bark when you come around?
I wouldn't take you to a dogfight even if I thought you could win.
Them that ain't got can't lose.
I may fall again, but I'll never get up this slow.
You're the busiest memory in town.
She feels like a new man tonight.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
You're gonna love yourself in the morning, because I'm gonna love you all night long.
It was always easy to find an unhappy woman till I started looking for mine.
Thank God and Greyhound you're gone.
She caught me lying, and then she caught a train.
The more I think of you, the less I think of me.
Don't cry down my back, baby, you might rust my spurs.
He made me dance before the music started.
I can't afford to half my half again.
There's no use running if you're on the wrong road.
When your cup of love is full, I'm begging you to pour it all over me.
You must think my bed's a bus stop, the way you come and go.
She stepped on my heart and stomped the sucker flat.
Forever, for us, wasn't nearly as long as we planned.
Just in time to be too late.
I'm afraid to come home early without warning.
The work we done was hard. At night we'd sleep 'cause we was tard.
I've been a long time leaving, but I'll be a long time gone.
I'm sick and tired of waking up so sick and tired.
It takes me all night long to do what I used to do all night long.
My wife ran off with my best friend, and I miss him.
The only thing I can count on now is my fingers.
Send a dozen roses up to her, and pour four for me.
I'm going someplace I hope I find.
I'm too low to get high.
He's walking in my tracks, but he can't fill me shoes.
For better or for worse, but not for long.
I gave her a ring, and she gave me the finger.
She took everything but the blame.
Just because you got to first base don't mean you're home free.
Walk out backwards so I'll think you're coming in.

Born with the gift of humor and the sense that the world is mad.
-- Sabatini, Scaramouche

It is easier to mimic that which we despise than to despise that which we mimic.
-- Renee Doubilard

The Black Dog is back.
-- attributed to Winston Churchill

We live constantly in metaphor, we live constantly in fiction, or at least on the edge of it.
-- Clive Baker, Brit horror writer

We must help the talented, because the untalented will succeed on their own.
--Russian proverb

Shortly before his death, Tarkovsky wrote: 'The connection between man's behavior and his destiny has been destroyed and this tragic breach is the cause of his sense of instability in the modern world . . . Because he has been conditioned into the belief that nothing depends on him, and that his personal experience will not effect the future, he has arrived at the false and deadly assumption that he has not a part to play in shaping his own fate. I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.'"
--David Puttnam, at the 1990 US Film Fest Town Meeting
(Wade: tie this into the radical language article and the paternalistic assumption that the excluded classes need us to save them. i.e., the assumption that our concern for the unempowered is based in our generosity rather than our needs. The Selma March is the best thing that ever happened to the white Southerner! Note: the media coverage of the Selma-to-Montgomery Anniversary focused almost entirely on Selma -- the struggle -- and not on Montgomery -- the victory.)

The Wu Li Masters know that "science" and "religion" are only dances, and that those who follow them are dancers. The dancers may claim to follow "truth" or claim to seek "reality" but the Wu Li Masters know better. They know that the true love of all dancers is dancing.
--Gary Zukov

Thank God I'm in Alabama. Back here, I'm home. I know who the sons of bitches are.
-- Clifford Durr, quoted by Virginia Durr

The London Underground is not a political movement.
-- A Fish Called Wanda

Being Weird Isn't Enough.
-- Button in "Pump Up the Volume"

We gave them Alabama, but they gave it right back.
-- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

I got a new shadow. I had to get rid of the other one...it wasn't doing what I was doing.
-- Steven Wright

Power is being able to make a decision without getting permission.
-- Cookie Gant, "Movers, Shakers, and Fakers," Alternatives '91

May you find a drug that appreciates you.
-- James Butler

We don't need to escape FROM as much as we need to escape TO. There's nothing TOUGH about Modern American Life. Mostly, it's just plain Boring. And it's boring because it carries with it a kind of unavoidable self-awareness. That self-awareness tells us that we don't need to escape from the harshness of life as much as we need to escape to a time or place in which unselfishness is acceptable behavior.
-- Donald Barnhorst

What To Remember --
Is Your Art Dangerous?
The Camera Is Not a Weapon. It's a Window.
If the Only Tool You Have Is A Hammer, Treat Everything Like a Nail.
When You Get Depressed, Remember Why You Are Here.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time.
-- Martha Graham

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
-- George Bernard Shaw

We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more.
-- Wm Ellery Channing

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein

Limitations lead to power. The strength of the genii comes from his being locked in a bottle.
-- Richard Wilbur

There are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when, in truth, to dare is the highest wisdom.
-- William Ellery Channing


The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.
-- Susan Sontag

Books won't stay banned. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.
-- A. Whitney Griswold

We only work for good causes, and they pay.
-- Woody Guthrie, on bookings for the Almanacs, after
being asked to perform for free "for a good cause."

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship.
-- J.H.Robinson, American historian (1863-1936)

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
-- James Russell Lowell

Dissent is not sacred; the right of dissent is.
-- Thurmond Arnold, American lawyer (1891-1969)

The heart may think it knows better; the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends. -- Eliz. Bowen, Irish-born author (1899-1973)

The meaning of life is the search for meaning.
-- unknown author?

If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.
-- Eliz. Janeway

The devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant.
-- F. LaGuardia

WITNESS.
-- this was an office wall sign in a social change organization (AFSC, I think) in Atlanta during the 60s, done in the style of the IBM "Think" signs

A young man went to a Chinese master.
"Master, can you give me wisdom?"
The Chinese master said he could, and led the young man down to a small
river. The two of them walked into the river together, first up to the
knees, then up to the chest, then up to the neck. Then the Chinese master
took the young man's head between his hands and pushed it under the water --
and held it there and held it there AND HELD IT THERE. The young man began
to struggle, getting more and more desperate, until finally the master
released him, and the young man shot his head up, gasping and drawing in huge
breaths of air.
"Master, you nearly drowned me! Couldn't you tell I was struggling?!"
The master replied, "When you want wisdom as desperately as you wanted
air, you will receive it."

In a dream you are never 80.
-- Anne Sexton

I'm a peripheral visionary.
-- Steve Wright

No group is ever free if it cannot have some fools and scoundrels without everybody in the group being blamed for it.
-- Carl Rowan

Oh body turned to music, oh brightning glance,
how do we tell the dancer from the dance?
-- "Among School Children," Yeats




Courage and Sex -- that's all Love really is.

-- Sweetie, Jane Campion




A big thanks for corrections, and to anyone who can help me identify the source of the quotes that are not attributed! Send to wadeblack@mindspring.com

This is a work in progress. More to come. #8->
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Copyright © 1996 L. Wade Black. All rights reserved.