Quotations Lacking Quotability

A few days ago I turned on the T.V. around 6 O'Clock and there to my wondering eyes did appear the nightly news. Had I been so long immersed in the Internet that I had forgotten my old friend T.V.? With every major media source having a constantly updating website dedicated to what was happening around the world I had left behind such quaint conventions as 'the nightly news'. So, just for old times sake, I sat down in my armchair with my slippers, pipe, and smoking jacket and prepared to be treated to the second best source of news available.

As I was in Philadelphia at the time the first story was of course about a series of shootings that had occurred the previous evening. The anchor, after giving a brief synopsis of events, sent the story to their 'reporter in the field'. Now this is where my disappointment set in. My memory of the nightly news told me that here I would find harrowing tails of how innocent citizens barely escaped ricochet bullets that came perilously close to them. I was not treated to such exciting accounts, but instead the quote given by an elderly resident ran along the lines of "People shouldn't be shooting guns off like that, it's just bad." No way! Bad? But in movies random gunfire just looks so awesome! I tried to excuse this lackluster quotation by telling myself that the woman was most likely at a loss for words considering the traumatic nature of the shootings, and possibly a bit vague in her senility. The next quote just left me floundering for excuses for its lack of insight or even coherence, "It went down fast you know? Like Bam Boom! I was saying to my boy people coming up and doing stuff and firemen dying and all that and cops too sometimes and shit just happens you can't fight it, you just can't. But somebody really oughta do somethin." From this quote we can gather that firmen are the main victims of random shootings, shootings that can't possibly be prevented, but which should be stopped. Really?

I kept watching, hoping that some story would come along that would provide me with a quote that would show some kind of valuable insight, but to no avail. It seemed that average Americans, regardless of region, age, or economic status were incapable of saying anything that could provide their fellow citizens with a better understanding of the events about which they were being questioned. After a while dwelling on this depressing conclusion I became determined to go out and get to the bottom of this problem. So I took to the streets to confront people with this alarming trend.

I first approached a young man waiting at a bus stop. He informed me that he was on his way to work at Carnegie Mellon downtown. When I informed him of the decline in the quality of quotations he replied quickly, "Well what do you expect? People are going to continue getting more stupid until 2012. That's when the world is going to end. The Mayans said so in Nostradamus' calendar. It's in the bible man, under R for Revelations. Look it up." Not a good start, but I kept going in my search to find an intelligent quotation. My hard work earned me the following gems.

"Who cares about quotations? I'm only interested in what people have to say!"
"Well I blame the schools, they should give classes on how to talk, because that's when quotations really count."
"Quotations are a difficult issue because the country is so divided over them. Until we learn to put aside personal differences things like the economy and quotations are going to suffer."
"That shit's f#&%ed up yo. People need to be versatile in how they talk and shit. Their shit has gotta have some diversification and shit. Because if you are just saying the same shit over and over again, well, shit! No one wants to hear that shit."

It was a rough day that yielded up little to give me hope. As my search for a decent quote wound down and I returned home to report my findings all I could say about the quotation crisis was, "This isn't a good thing and someone somewhere should do something about this thing."