The Offspring of Devo and Some C3-PO's

If you would have told me a month ago that Trump was considering an adoption of Andrew Yang's platform, I would have bet you $1000/week for life that you were wrong.

March 18, 2020

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Either that was Arcade Fire on Saturday Night Live last night, or it was the offspring of Devo and a bunch of C3-PO's.

March 18, 2018

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Fareed Zakaria:

“I think the president is somewhat indifferent to things that are true or false. He has spent his whole life bullshitting. He has succeeded by bullshittng. He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting. It’s very hard to tell somebody at that point that bullshit doesn’t work, because look at the results, right? But that’s what he does — he sees something, he doesn’t particularly care if it’s true or not, he just puts it out there. And then he puts something else out. … When pushed on it, he doesn’t take responsibility: ‘I wasn’t saying that, I was just quoting somebody else.’”

https://ew.com/tv/2017/03/17/fareed-zakaria-donald-trump-bs-cnn/

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Only 22% of young adults view the president favorably. I never told my daughter a thing about him and whenever she sees his picture she says, "he's yucky."

You might know the old chant- youth is truth, I wish old rhymed with lies.

March 18, 2017

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I interviewed a dead ringer for Bukowski today, and like Bukowski, he had also worked at the post office for years. I happened to know the first line of Bukowski's "Post Office" so I worked it into conversation. He didn't flinch, so it wasn't Bukowski, which should come as no surprise since he's been dead for 20 years. (By the way, the Post Office line also described the interview- "It began as a mistake.")

March 18, 2014

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The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. -Bukowski

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I'll quote Bukowski, but I wouldn't hire Bukowski. I'll read Bukowski, but if I had to live like Bukowski for even a single day I'd certainly be dead by sundown.

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Turns out Sloth is pissing blood thanks to my direct kidney shot during cornerball practice. Watch out Amish- we're getting better each day!

March 18, 2009

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I was just recognized by my 8th grade soccer coach... I haven't seen him in 21 years and I was only 14 at the time. How on earth did he remember me?

March 18, 2009

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On this day in 1902, my great-great-grandfather, Albert Smith, was hit by a train and died.

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Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov his spacecraft for 12 minutes on this day in 1965, and became the first person to walk in space.

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On this date in 1845 Johnny Appleseed died and Lakota chief Kicking Bear was born. One lived to create the land as he wished, and the other strove to live in accordance with the land as it was. I'm certainly over-generalizing, but is one right and wrong? 

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Among the best opening credits in film history- The Ballad of Cable Hogue. A man's water is stolen in the desert and and he's left to die. He walks for days arguing with, and praying to, God. "Now if I sinned, you just send me a drop or two and I won’t do it anymore… whatever in the hell it was I did. I mean that Lord."

https://youtu.be/LwAuW18mz3Q

https://youtu.be/N4IBknsis7I

It was released on this day in 1970.

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John Updike- "We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one."

John Updike, born this day in 1932, with all of his moments ahead of him, including his last one, and including the one where his thought on surviving every moment popped into his head. 

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Other notable birthdays- Grover Cleveland (1837), Neville Chamberlain (1869), Charley Pride (1934), J.T. Realmuto (1991)

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Erich Fromm left us on this day in 1980.

"Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love."

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Chuck Berry left us on this day in 2017.

"I'm thankful for each and every day. We never know when time is up."

I'm thankful to be here today, reflecting on his wise words.

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Oh no, Chuck Berry died. Who's next? Olivia de Havilland? Little Richard? Harry Dean Stanton?

One of my favorites- Memphis, Tennessee

https://youtu.be/w5ezeUM6c74

March 18, 2017

Postscript- just a couple years later and they were all gone.

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This video starts slow, but really hits on some key elements of why things are funny, and why they can become cemented in our consciousness. 

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/03/chris-bliss-texrainier-comedy/

March 18, 2012

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The Onion- Punxsutawney Phil Beheaded For Inaccurate Prediction On Annual Groundhog Slaughtering Day

http://www.theonion.com/articles/punxsutawney-phil-beheaded-for-inaccurate-predicti,31712/

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Got my car inspected yesterday, needed to replace two blown seals... reminded me of this joke.

https://youtu.be/ZUabDrfjATY

March 18, 2014

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The Onion- Masochistic Toilet Craving Hot Piss

March 18, 2017

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Norm jokes "that could get you canceled today."

https://youtu.be/-qUf-tQIOr0

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Christopher Hitchens- "It's called faith because it is not knowledge."

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Ovid, Metamorphoses- "Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence."

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Steven Pinker- "On the whole, the acceptability of taboo words is only loosely tied to the acceptability of what they refer to, but, in the case of taboo terms for effluvia, the correlation is fairly good. The linguists Keith Allan and Kate Burridge have noted that shit is less acceptable than piss, which in turn is less acceptable than fart, which is less acceptable than snot, which is less acceptable than spit (which is not taboo at all). That’s the same order as the acceptability of eliminating these substances from the body in public."

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Proust, Swann's Way:

"My mother sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?"

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Laozi-

"Countless words

count less

than the silent balance

between yin and yang"

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Penn Jillette- "What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true for you, why isn't it true for them? Why are you different? If you say "I believe there's an all-powerful force of love in the universe that connects us all, and I have no evidence of that but I believe it in my heart," then it's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that Sharon Tate deserves to die. It's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that you need to fly planes into buildings for Allah."

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Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

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Mitch Hedberg- I got some tartar control toothpaste. I still got tartar, but that shit's under control.

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