Now that's funny. Call it the Minnow.

In Angel, but nonspoilery:

Cindy: You know, before the Champion thing became the new black on Angel, I used to have this whole big riff on how Buffy is a hero and Angel is a champion.

Billytea: Maybe you could rewrite it with Angel as a champignon. There seems to be a consensus that the latest ep demonstrated how much in the dark he really is.

From Firefly a la Footprints in the Sand:

melsta quoting Adam Baldwin from the Official Firefly Board

"Keep believing, Joss will figure something out... He loves us."

Laura

and he is not alone.

and Allyson

And when there was only one set of footprints in the sand, it was Joss, stalking behind you, planning to give you a wedgie.

Jess PMoon in Bitches

the customer is 98% of the time wrong like a Parker-Riley sandwich and lying through their teeth to get a free somethingorother.

Picking through Dude, here's a good one from

Matt the Bruins Fan - I really am the only Buffista who loves the Jackson films in an entirely platonic way, aren't I?

In UnAmericans:

Betsy: Buffistas are all about the snark, Zoe. Seriously. That's our unifying value.

Okay, snark and politeness.

Okay, snark, politeness, and cheekbones.

Penny B: Our four greatest assets are. . .

Context? It's Allyson. You'll get no more context from me.

It's a look that screams, "Give me acid washed stretch jeans and the latest Whitesnake album, because we're going to the mall!"

Miracleman in Natter (he gets to COMM even when he's not funny!):

So, somewhat random babbling.

Aimee decided we would watch selected episodes of From The Earth To The Moon, detailing and dramatizing the Apollo space program that took us to the first man on the moon. And it occurred to me that the space program is a miracle.

Merriam-Webster's defines a miracle as:

Main Entry: mir·a·cle
Pronunciation: 'mir-i-k&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin miraculum, from Latin, a wonder, marvel, from mirari to wonder at
Date: 12th century
1 : an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2 : an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
3 Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law

I understand that definition 1 doesn't necessarily apply. To my knowledge God Him/Herself never appeared to Kennedy or Buzz Aldrin or whoever and said "Thou shalt exceed the pull of earth and touch the Moon". But look at definition 2 again.

In four billion years (roughly) no species other than humanity has left the atmosphere. No species, in four billion years, has touched another heavenly body. We have done something we were never designed by nature to do. We defied evolution, we shook our fists at the "natural order" of things and achieved "an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment".

We built a miracle with our hands.

I mourn the loss of Columbia and her crew. I also mourn the crew of Challenger, and the crew of Apollo 1. These seventeen people are forever engraved on my soul as heroes of the highest order.

I'm not going to talk of nobility of sacrifice...I think it's a hollow argument. While these people accepted risk as part of their calling, I don't believe any of them, if asked, would say "Golly it's swell to die in the service of such a cause". Most of them would probably say "I would like to have come home and seen my family".

But, to me, their deaths, while tragic, were not a waste. They were not tossed unprepared into danger to accomplish nothing. They were not martyrs to a feeble and useless cause.

They helped build a miracle.

I'm going to go about my life and maybe write something good, and have a family and have my own private miracles. I can't fool myself, though. I'm not going to touch the stars, I will never walk on the surface of the moon, I will never see Mons Olympus with my own eyes. I won't be contributing to the human miracle of space travel. All I can do is watch it and cheer.

Just so long as the miracle keeps happening.

Wolfram in Angel:

I think it's really a word to give Angel a purpose. After all, he's not the SLAYER. If he weren't a CHAMPION, he'd just be a run-of-the-mill, black clothes-loving, brooding, 250 year old, souled vampire private investigator who fights evil.

Penny B

Not quite on topic, but this discussion reminds me of something a co-worker said to me when I was teaching in Japan: "Here, the vampire is always a foreigner."