Golf Balls, Business Tips, and Some Filth

Henny Youngman was born on this day in 1906

"While playing golf today, I hit two good balls. I stepped on a rake."

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."

"When God sneezed, I didn't know what to say."

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With all the Trump nonsense over the last several years, to me there's one thing that stands out above all. In arguing for presidential immunity (in contradiction to not only the Constitution, but also to the Magna Carta which was written 1215), his lawyers argued that a president would even have immunity if they were to assassinate political rivals.

Now does Trump REALLY believe that? 

Does he really believe ANY president as the authority to assassinate their political rivals? 

Are you getting my point?

Does Trump, the political rival of the current president, believe the current president has the authority to assassinate his political rivals?

Argue absurdities and you end up with absurdities.

March 16, 2024

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Business Tip: Do not go into business with your dog. My dog and I were just doing our business in the park and I got arrested.

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I don't make fun of applicants the way I used to. #1, it's mean. #2, it's way too fun. I saw on a resume today that a woman used to work for, "The Pep Boys - Manny, Moe and Jack." 

Manny, Moe and Jack? It was as if she thought her resume was being judged on word count. Someone at Giant asks her if she needs help finding something and she says, "Yeah Rice Krispies - Snap, Crackle and Pop."

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I remember an entry in Found Magazine. Someone found a shopping list with three items- watermelon, batteries, roach spray. That has always stuck with me. Really conjures an image.

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The other day I ran into someone I know relatively well. He's not a political person, but was going on and on about how Covid is nothing to worry about, mocking the fact that grandparents can be with their grandkids again. We'll have over six hundred thousand deaths by the time this is over, the high bound of the window they gave us early on... the bound, if you remember, they said we could hit if we acted like total idiots. It seemed incomprehensible at the time. Makes me wonder how many deaths it would take for someone like him to take this seriously. If a half-million doesn't make an impression, a million certainly wouldn't. Two million wouldn't. Maybe 3.3 million would make a difference- at that point one in a hundred would have died. Most of us would have known someone who died. If you work with a hundred people, chances are one of them would be around anymore. That might be the point that asymptomatic spread would be seriously contemplated. At that point they might not downplay the death of someone who was 65 with diabetes, for instance, someone who had 20 more years to live otherwise. Honestly I don't even think 3.3 million would make a dent in their belief. The only thing that might change their belief is if they were the one who died.

March 16, 2020

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David Sedaris, Theft by Finding:

Today at work I broke a rake, a shovel, and a hammer. Every tool that was placed in my hands. I saw a lot of centipedes under the house. After I crawled through a pile of cat shit I decided to call it a day and go home."

A perfect diary entry.

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Man, this guy is a powerful writer. You'd think each point was hyperbole but it's all founded in simple facts. They ARE cutting disease research which will lead to deaths. It IS a philosophy against helping the poor. They really DON'T believe in science. They favor the military ABOVE diplomacy. Somehow he ends on a hopeful note, and I'm with him...in case you're starting to think there isn't any hope left.

Dan Rather: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02EYLXfunVo6QNKUVt1GkvWsosr3HBxdmeD7GJi3e4bCo1bmMcXfvRFeP1cwm5Fjv3l&id=24085780715&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=jf9HGS

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Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That, p. 31- "When you have lived your individual life in your own adventurous way and then look back upon its course, you will find that you have lived a model human life, after all."

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Interesting thought. 

Lori Marino- "If an alien came down any time prior to about 1.5 million years ago to communicate with the "brainiest" animals on earth, they would have tripped over our own ancestors and headed straight for the oceans to converse with the dolphins."

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Sometimes I consider memorizing Mitch Hedberg's pantheon of jokes and reciting them daily, not unlike the way Muslims memorize and recite the Koran. Anybody want to share any faves?

March 16, 2014

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From now on marathons should only be thirteen miles long, but the runners should have to run twice as fast. I'm sure you'll agree that it would save everybody a hell of a lot of time.

March 16, 2011

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Adolf Hitler ordered Germany to rearm on this day in 1935, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

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Ten years to the day later, ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany was destroyed in 20 minutes by British bombers, resulting in at least 4,000 deaths.

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Merleau-Ponty- "To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure."

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That might not be so true for the My Lai Massacre which happened this day in 1968.

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On this day in 1988, Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

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On this day in 2009 Muntadhar al-Zaidi was sentenced to 3 years in jail for throwing his shoe at that guy everybody used to call President Bush. What could have he been so upset about? Very nearly a hard-hitting piece of journalism.

https://youtu.be/OM3Z_Kskl_U

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Mercedes McCambridge joined us on this day in 1916. She was uncredited as the voice of the demon Pazuzu in the Exorcist. Orson Welles called her the greatest living radio actress. It is said that she was the first person to ride with James Dean in the Porsche Spyder he later died in.

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Tsutomu Yamaguchi joined us on the same day. He was the only survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.

"The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breastfeeding their babies."

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Another notable birthday- James Madison (1751)

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David Sedaris, Theft by Finding:

"Today at work I broke a rake, a shovel, and a hammer. Every tool that was placed in my hands. I saw a lot of centipedes under the house. After I crawled through a pile of cat shit I decided to call it a day and go home."

A perfect diary entry. (From his early 20's.)

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From the back cover of my 1994/5 journal:

"SPICY PEANUTS"

"SEANCE"

"SNAKES ALIVE"

I wonder how those three things fit together...

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The Guardian- Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

Nothing to worry about here people, just carry on as normal. (Nothing to worry about, that is, except for the collapse of civilization as we know it... you know, like how all of the other ones collapsed.)

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

March 16, 2014

Postscript- Well, we made it nine more years, at least.

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Huffington Post- "Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church Founder, Is 'On The Edge Of Death'"

George Takei- "I take no solace or joy in this man's passing. We will not dance upon his grave, nor stand vigil at his funeral holding "God Hates Freds" signs, tempting as it may be. He was a tormented soul, who tormented so many. Hate never wins out in the end. It instead goes always to its lonely, dusty end."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/16/fred-phelps-dying-death-westboro-baptist_n_4974584.html

March 16, 2014

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Mother Jones- The Trump Administration’s Four Most Heartless Statements About the Budget

Cutting Meals on Wheels “is one of the most compassionate things we can do.”

What's their take on the first line of the Constitution which says it's the federal government's responsibility to "promote the general welfare"? You won't find them admit the truth- they believe their own garbage above the Constitution, and have abandoned the notion that we have a government of the people, that government is the mechanism be which we promote our own general welfare.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/running-list-heartless-statements-about-budget-trump-administration

March 16, 2017

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Washington Post- The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the worst of Donald Trump by Fareed Zakaria 

The notion that we can't question the president's leadership is hogwash, particularly when he repeatedly undercuts and contradicts his own experts.

Fareed:

In most global crises, the United States takes the lead and provides comfort and assurances to the world. In this one, Trump has been mostly AWOL. When he does appear, it is to blame the disease on foreigners and announce policies that are designed to reinforce that view. The broad collapse in global markets is surely in part a reaction to the vast vacuum of leadership in the White House.

Trump views everything from the narcissistic prism of his ego. He dismisses opposing views and insists that even the senior-most members of his administration repeatedly praise him and his leadership at all times. Watching the heads of America’s leading science agencies prefacing their statements with ritual praise for the “dear leader” has been depressing.

Come to think of it, the Trump administration has been copying the wrong Korea. Instead of the intelligence and expertise of South Korea, it is emulating the sycophancy, incompetence and propaganda of North Korea.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/some-countries-have-been-successful-in-combating-the-coronavirus-the-us-is-not-one-of-them/2020/03/12/63378f40-649f-11ea-b3fc-7841686c5c57_story.html

March 16, 2020

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IFLScience- If A Nuclear Weapon Is About To Explode, Here's What A Safety Expert Says You Can Do To Survive

Just bash in the door of your neighbor's bomb shelter. I saw that on the Twilight Zone, and I'm pretty sure that was the lesson.

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/if-a-nuclear-weapon-is-about-to-explode-heres-what-a-safety-expert-says-you-can-do-to-survive/

March 16, 2022

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Jim Jefferies on Trump

https://fb.watch/jhslZ9aWFz/?mibextid=irwG9G

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Charles Bukowski- “We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

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Bill Maher- "Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance."

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Peter McWilliams- "If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts."

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George Carlin- “Today’s professional parents; these obsessive diaper sniffers are over-scheduling and over-managing their children and robbing them of their childhoods. Even the simple act of playing has been taken away from children and put on mommy’s schedule in the form of play dates.”

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Susan Sontag- "You have to create your own space which has a lot of silence in it and a lot of books."

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Pier Paolo Pasolini- "I wanted to be alone, because only alone, lost, silent, on foot, can I recognize things.”

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Maya Angelou- "Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us."

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Vincent van Gogh- "There are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness."

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Martin Heidegger- "If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life — and only then will I be free to become myself. ”

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Alfred Hitchcock- “Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake."

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Penn Jillette, Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales- "If stupid hippies hadn't killed nuclear power, we'd have nuclear power plants, safer and cheaper than coal-fired plants, all over, and electric cars really would be zero emissions."

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Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

"Why, what did she tell you?"

"I don't know, I didn't listen.

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Mitch Hedberg- "My belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. What the fuck's really going on down there? Who is the real hero?"

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Just so we and on a high note, how about a classic limerick? Here's #1722 from any limerick collection you will find:

There once was a young man named Lanny

The size of whose prick was uncanny.

His wife, the poor dear,

Took it into the ear, 

And it came out the hole in her fanny.

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Tell everyone you know.