Zen of Racquetball, Nightmares, Jokes, Otherworldly Experiences, and More Nightmares and Jokes

Photographer Gary Winogrand left us on this day in 1984.

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I played the soul right out my body tonight at racquetball. Something strange happened. I only won 1 of 5 games and we decided to play one more even though I could barely bend over to pick up the ball. Very strange- I started hitting fantastic shot after fantastic shot. I'm not bragging, it was like a mystical experience. I don't know how it was possible. It was as if mind/body duality evaperated and it was all one thing. I was calm and confident, but it was also beyond that. It was as if I knew I made the shots before I hit them. It was as if it wasn't even me playing.

Afterward, I walked through Giant in the same sort of meditative trance. It was as if I was in the world, but not of the world. I looked at the hundreds of varieties of Pop-Tarts and smiled. That was just too many types of Pop-Tarts! 

Several people were walking around having full conversations on their cell phones, loudly and with hand gestures, the works. What sort of bizarre behavior was acceptable in this weird place?

I had caught a glimpse of my reflection in my car window before coming in- huge veins were pulsing out of my head, like some freak. I could have got a job at any carnival. The thought that someone would notice my veins was amusing. 

I had went to Giant to get medication and pee pads for our dog. Neither were there, so I ended up with a all the supplies to make about 100 sundaes instead. I guess my id was shopping.

Decision-time with the maraschino cherries- no stems for $1.79, or with stems for $1.99. With stems of course! It made me laugh, thinking how I was spending 20 extra cents for inedible stems that would end up in the trash. Should I buy them with no stems and just throw away 20 cents? No way, presentation creates extra enjoyment! (Wait, why would it cost more to leave the stems on???)

I only mention this minutiae because everything had heightened significance to me. There was a downpour outside. People were running with jackets pulled up over their heads. Such strange behavior, I scoffed. 

I walked right out into it at a leisurely pace. It was very wet, very cold, and very windy. My paced quickened, and once again I was of the world- thankful for both the shelter of my car, and a brief view into otherworldliness.

March 19, 2022

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If a bank is too big to fail, that means before it would fold, there's a privatization of profit with the public covering the risk.

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I read through a list of 150 Robin Williams jokes today. I never knew there was so much to learn about platypuses. 

March 19, 2022

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Today Gretel was flopping around on the ground kind of dancing to some music. Emma said that dancing around on the ground should have a name. Immediately Zuzu said "the flopper bop." She's 6 and excellent at wordplay! I sat her down later and told her she has a gift for wordplay and she was so pleased, her happiness was gushing over

March 19, 2022

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Watching my kids play with all of their neighborhood friends, I sometimes feel like I have a crystalline view into their future hazy childhood memories. Of course these are simultaneously my own future hazy adulthood memories, that hopefully I'll one day be able to look back on wistfully. 

March 19, 2022

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This pro gun page that I follow posts a bunch of nonsense way to the right of the NRA. The other day they posted: "What are the last four letters of American? I can. What are the last four letters of Republican? I can. What are the last four letters of Democrats? Rats!" I told them that was obviously a great gag and asked if they knew what the last four letters of Trump spelled.

Now to say that the far right gun crowd is easily... triggered... would be an understatement. Like 50 people swooped in to hurl insults, most along the lines of, "it's what Hillary can kiss because she's a loser get over it libtard," all patting each other on the back.

But one guy dug a little deeper. He asked me what the middle three letters of my last name are, spelled backwards. Tip of the hat to that guy. I can recognize a good zinger when I see one.

March 19, 2018

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My knee is acting up... an old air hockey injury.

March 19, 2018

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Truth Check- the president said his health care plan will be a fraction of the price of Obamacare.

TRUE! 4/3 is a fraction.

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Truth Check: The new health care plan will cover all the people at a fraction of the cost. 

FALSE, BUT VERY CLOSE: It will cover a fraction of the people at all the cost.

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Truth Check: The health care law with the fewest pages is the better plan. 

FALSE! "Get sick and die" is a very brief health care plan.

March 19, 2017

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Gretel had a nightmare and woke me up with her crying. She said she was in a bed but in a different house, and there was a centipede there. "It didn't try to bite me but it was mean." 

It didn't seem necessary to tell her about my nightmare that she interrupted- we were walking on the beach and a killer whale was lurking in the waves, occasionally coming way up on land trying to eat us.

March 19, 2017

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I'm listening to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I made it up to Socrates and forgot to turn off my iPod when I got home from work. The next morning I found it only halfway through. That helps put things in perspective.

March 19, 2016

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Watching Burden of Dreams with Gretel, Les Blank's documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo. She'll later wonder where her deep fear of jungles derived...

Herzog- [On the jungle] Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they - they sing. They just screech in pain. It's an unfinished country. It's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is - is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever... goes too deep into this has his share of this curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It's a land that God, if he exists has - has created in anger. It's the only land where - where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

March 19, 2014

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On this day in 1831 was the first recorded American Bank heist- robbers got away with 245k (1831 value, wow) from City Bank (now Citibank) on Wall Street. I always hope nobody's hurt, but how can you not root for the bankrobbers? Bad news though, the money was recovered.

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This is the anniversary of Hitler's "Nero Decree." This day in 1945, he basically ordered all of Germany destroyed- all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities, and communications facilities. (You might be a monomaniacal megalomaniac if...)

Yesterday was Neville Chamberlain's birthday. I've been thinking about Russia/Ukraine through his prism. If Putin was Hitler in 1936, and had a nuclear arsenal, we would have to appease him, right? Otherwise we just guaranteed your own destruction. Mutually Assured Destruction only works as a deterrent when you have two rational actors! It's 2022 and Dr. Strangelove is finally a documentary. Yes well, we've avoided all the mean centipedes an killer whales that want to get us so far.

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On this day in 1863, the Confederate cruiser, SS Georgiana, was destroyed on its maiden voyage with a cargo valued at over $1,000,000. 

And on this day in 1965, the wreck of the SS Georgiana, now valued at $50,000,000, was discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.

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Eraserhead was released on this day in 1977. Here are David Lynch and Jack Nance on set.

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Born on this day: Wyatt Earp (1848), Mom's Mabley (1894), Adolph Eichmann (1906), Hiroo Onoda (1922), Richie Ashburn (1927), Philip Roth (1933), Ursula Andress (1936), Bruce Willis (1956)

Imagine a dinner party with that motley crew. Ursula Andress, and 5 corpses? No thanks.

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Arthur C. Clarke left us on this day in 2008.

"Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?"

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Other notable deaths- Randy Rhodes (1982), Fred Phelps (2014)

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Another great movie on Netflix- The Wrecking Crew. I never knew that this big group of studio musicians played the music for like every popular song of the 60's and beyond. They played instead of the actual band because they were better and would get everything in one take. I particularly liked the story of Good Vibrations.
https://youtu.be/9UqNvMOdhGU
March 19, 2016

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The Hill- Poll: Trump job approval hits new low
The bad news for him, his approval dropped to 37%. There's good news though, he still has the option of uniting the country by joining the majority.

That's two recent polls that each have him down 5% since their last poll. You think that might be the 5% who had Obamacare and voted for him, realizing too late that they fell for the classic con man bait and switch?

Or perhaps those 5% were part of the "silent majority" who believe that if we can spend millions on weekly presidential vacations, we have the money to feed old people and keep the arts in schools.

You gotta hand it to that 37% percent though, they're holding tough... perhaps waiting until something affects them personally.

http://hill.cm/RvJwy0b

March 19, 2017

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The Hill- Weld hammers Trump over McCain attacks: You’re a ‘national embarrassment’
That's a message that resonates. Might change to Republican to vote in the primaries.

http://hill.cm/Mo3BdY

March 19, 2019

Postscript- Disrespecting a recently dead Republican Senator? Nahhh! They love it.

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McSweeney's- NO PRESIDENT BEFORE TRUMP EVER RESPONDED MORE BOLDLY, SWIFTLY, AND DECISIVELY IN THE FACE OF CRITICIS

Oh, perfect. Thanks to McSweeney's for the catharsis.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/no-president-before-trump-ever-responded-more-boldly-swiftly-and-decisively-in-the-face-of-criticism

March 19, 2020

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I saw this ridiculous clip this morning and it rang through my head the whole day.

"Who are you, and how did you get in here?"

"I'm a locksmith, and I'm a locksmith."

https://youtu.be/pRva7z8pvwc

March 19, 2021

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Creepy Reddit story:

Once as a kid, my parents took me to a carnival. I was four years old, and at the time an only child. I got in line for one of those rides where you sit inside a plastic dragon and spin the wheel to rotate yourself faster. Climbing into what I assumed was an empty dragon, I was startled to see another girl already waiting for the ride to start. She looked exactly like me. We spun the wheel and stared at each other in silence, without blinking, for the entire duration of the ride. When it ended, we got mixed up in the shuffle and my parents started to walk away with this other little girl. I yelled for them to wait, and they turned back and saw me 20 feet behind them. They both went ghost white, and when I caught up, my doppelgänger was gone. To this day, we never ever speak of that trip to the carnival.

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Headline- Chef Throws His Heart Into Helping Feed Needy

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Christopher Hitchens- "Of course we have free will. We have no choice."

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Steven Wright- "If all the world's a stage, where's the audience sitting?"

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In 1993 Bill and Hillary Clinton were being driven through her hometown and Hillary saw her old boyfriend pumping gas. Bill said, "If you hadn't married me, you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant."

Hillary said, "If I hadn't married you, he would be president."

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Anthony Bourdain- “So far, I’ve found that all line cooks share the same sense of being outsiders, degraded, beaten-down, underappreciated. Many of us have messy, dysfunctional, chaotic lives outside of the kitchen, but inside the kitchen we have the only order, the only structure in our lives.”

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Henny Youngman- A man is at the bar, drunk. I pick him up off the floor, and offer to take him home. On the way to my car, he falls down three times. When I get to his house, I help him out of the car, and on the way to the front door, he falls down four more times. I ring the bell and say, "Here's your husband!" The man's wife says, "Where's his wheelchair?

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Steinbeck- "All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

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Charles Bukowski- "Eyes. Those damn eyes Fucked me forever."

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Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe- "It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

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