Dismal Quotes

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

(N orfolk, VA.--It`s hard to tell exactly when the Norfolk Public Schools hit rock bottom, but 1998 was particularly dismal across the board: Just 38 percent of third graders passed the state`s Standards of Learning, or SOL, test in English; 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient in mathematics; and a mere 18 percent of high schoolers passed Virginia and U.S. history. For John Simpson, who took over as superintendent that same year with a mandate to boost achievement for all of the district`s 37,000 students, the only solution was to completely shake things up.) When I arrived, people were unhappy, but many of them had the attitude that given a fairly poor and high-minority population, that might be all that they could do, ... There was no room for excuses anymore.

(How he got the role in Randal from "Clerks"): "I knew Kevin from high school. We graduated the same year. After high school, Kevin used to work in the video store from Clerks, which is just as dismal in real life as it is on film, therefore it was a great place to rent videos because nobody would go there. Kevin was an awesome video employee. He was the anti-Randal, never charged late fees and always had a recommendation for good flicks to rent. It was my coming to the video store, which eventually got me the role as Randal. He`d be pecking away at the script for Clerks while he worked and we would talk about it and when he was finally holding auditions, he invited me down to watch. I watched the auditions, which were less than stellar, then got up and did my own less than stellar audition. Somehow, Kevin saw something he liked in it and came to my house a few nights later and read me for Randal."

The Endangered Species Act has been a dismal failure, and in 25 years the act has yet to bring a single species off the list into recovery.

a single annual meeting reflects the reality of the market. Attendance at the recent European COMMON was dismal. A single, annual event, coupled with important changes to the venue and purpose, might encourage ASNA to attend a future event.

The war on drugs is not only a dismal failure, but it`s a terribly destructive policy.

Iran has a dismal record on human rights.

After a brilliant offensive campaign to destroy the Iraqi military forces, we have settled into a very dismal and dangerous occupation.

We expect the fourth quarter to be pretty dismal, and the first six months of 2002 could be unexciting. Then it picks up from there. On a comparative basis, it`ll look nicer than this year. I think we`ll be up high single to a low double digits.