In June 2001 I started running a free “quote a day” e-mail list. In April 2002, I changed from Topica (great service, excellent price, ugly ads) to my own listserver.

You can subscribe to it by going here.

Since I have some space to kill here, I’ll answer one of my most frequently asked questions (thus demonstrating that nobody asks me any questions), “So how do you put your daily WIST together?”

Well, around 5:30 p.m. or so, every day, I get a reminder up on my computer screen. “Have you sent your WIST today?” If I didn’t get this sort of warning, it would never happen. Read from that what you will.

I open up a blank e-mail. I put in the address I have for posting mail to my list.

I go into the body, and click on my “signature” button. This pulls in a random sig line from my copy of Siggy (see “Software” for more information).

Unless it’s something completely wrong for the day, I then glean a one or two word subject, put it in the subject line, and click Send. And away it goes.

My host’s MailMan magic mailing system does the rest of the work, appending in all the other stuff that fills each post.

I occasionally do a “theme” week, but by and large, it’s all randomly selected for your WISTing pleasure.

And now you know. And, as GI Joe would say, knowing is half the battle.

UPDATE: (17-Jul-07) I’ve disabled the mail link above because the new setup doesn’t support an automated process, and I’m not going to continue the WIST-by-mail unless that’s working (or is trivial to do).

WIST is organized by author, alphabetically (I’d love to be even more elaborate, but that must wait for a future revision). The letter links in the sidebar will take you to the page of those authors with names beginning in that letter. You can also search for authors (or quotation text, or sources) in the Search box.
(The section of links under that goes to various other informational parts of the WIST site. The Sources section includes information on how I alphabetized some names.)
Where items are cited to Anonymous or where ordering them by author name makes no sense (because it’s a one-off quote by an obscure individual), I’ve put them under the “~Misc” category. I’ve also included sig lines in that category where:

• It’s a quip, a bon mot, something that would fit on a bumper sticker or a button.
• Who said it is utterly unknown, or else who said it is so well known that to cite it adds no value and detracts from the quippiness.
• Where I felt like it.

I’ve been collecting quotes, aphorisms, maxims, and sig lines since junior high (which is more years ago than I care to relate). I read books of quotations. I dog-ear pages in books I’m reading so that I can come back later and copy particularly good bits out. And, more recently, I quickly jot quotes I see down in my Palm so I can have a record of them.

When I first put together a quotations collection (a hard-copy effort, given as a Christmas gift to people who didn’t mind something that was cheap if it had the personal touch), I called the collection “WIST” for “Wish I’d Said That.”

That name is important because it’s not altogether true. This is not just a collection of quotations whose sentiments I agree with. In some cases there are ideas that I disagree with, firmly; in those cases, though, I’ve included the quote either because I admire the turn of phrase or else I thought it was so absurd, it made me smile just to read it.

But me repeat that in big, bold lettering, so that people don’t miss it:

In other words, don’t e-mail me a complaint just because I quoted someone saying something you object to.

Now, the fact is, I do agree with most of what I quote here. Hopefully it will become pretty obvious when I don’t (or, again, when it isn’t a matter of agreement, but just enjoying a particular expression of thought). And, of course, there are some quotations where I agree with them sometimes, disagree with others.

So if I don’t always wish I’d said something, why not change the name? Tradition, I suppose, plus it’s a handy catch phrase.

I’m experimenting with how to make WIST work, with minimum fuss and maximum ease of updating, in MT. So far, so good.

One potential problem is that I want to have different ways of presenting entries — the alphabetical quotation pages very stripped down, but things like these News entries with the full date info and so forth. Haven’t figured that one out yet.