Glory, Tragedy, and Minutiae

Philosophers have pondered the Problem of Evil for centuries... if God is good, all-knowing, everywhere, and all-powerful, how can evil exist? Either God is impotent to stop evil, or can stop evil but chooses not to.

Well I might have solved it tonight. I got an email from a wine club, advertising wine drinking as the "self-care" that we all need right now. I'll be damned if that isn't evil and also the most supremely good idea I've ever heard. Is EVERYTHING both good and evil?

*Just kidding, if the Nazis taught us nothing else, it is that evil is the opposite of good and must be destroyed. But elsewhere there are a lot of gray areas.

April 29, 2020

...

At kickball yesterday I tore my quadricep to smithereens. Struggling to get dressed this morning, I noticed the brand name of my shirt- Faded Glory.

Postscript- I think I dodged a bullet, it's likely just a really bad strain. Hopefully only out of commission for a month or two. I tore my achilles tendon in 2011 and then my ACL following year. After that I decided to start only giving 99% when playing sports. Now at 50 years old, I might have to drop that to 97 or 98%.

...

Meme: At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and none of you knew it.

Every time I see that, I almost start crying! I have a real psychological problem accepting the ends of things.

...

At the beach this weekend with the kids. It turned on me that if Pangea had never split up, instead of stepping into the ocean, we would be stepping into Morocco.

April 29, 2023

Postscript- Again, I get hit with a wave of depression when I leave the beach. It doesn't last too long, thankfully, but it has to do with something definite coming to an end.

...

Xylophonist Teddy Brown left us on this day in 1946. You might want to do yourself a favor and check this out:

https://youtu.be/rDGqBJNU6t0

...

Roger Sterling- “Maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all. Bet there are people in the Bible walking around, complaining about kids today.” 

...

Eve Plumb was born on this day in 1958.

There's a story about a rich man paying an old, wise Native American to teach him all the wisdom he knows. The Native American left, and came back several weeks later. He handed the man a piece of paper that read, "Grandfather dies, Father dies, Son dies." The man is furious at the absurdity of the message. This is what he paid for? The Native American explained, that is the natural progression of things. You can't wish for anything more.

Mike and Carol Brady are both dead, along with Alice. Someday, one of the Brady kids will die. That is the natural progression of things, but we aren't there yet.

...

That reminds me of a classic limerick

Nymphomaniacal Alice 

 Used to dynamite stick for a phallus. 

 They found her vagina 

 In North Carolina, 

 And her asshole in Buckingham Palace.

...

Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate:

"Moral philosophers play with a hypothetical dilemma in which people can run through the left door of a burning building to save some number of children or through the right door to save their own child. If you are a parent, ponder this question: Is there any number of children that would lead you to pick the left door? Indeed, all of us reveal our preference with our pocketbooks when we spend money on trifles for our own children (a bicycle, orthodontics, an education at a private school or university) instead of saving the lives of unrelated children in the developing world by donating the money to charity."

...

There are three key times of my life I have felt like a minority- student teaching on Native American reservations, traveling to Rwanda, and right now watching White House Correspondents Dinner Night in standard definition. The rest of the world has this and high definition, right?

*Quintessential first world problem, get Weird Al on the phone.

April 29, 2017

...

Willie Nelson was born on this day in 1933. I really like him, he seems like a great guy, but I can't tolerate his music. Actually that's not true. He wrote Crazy for Patsy Cline. He didn't call it Crazy though. He called it Stupid.

...

I had several spells of sharp, stabbing, jarring pains in my head periodically throughout the day today. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that the last thing I heard as I pulled in to work was Ambrose Bierce's definition of MIND from The Devil's Dictionary:

"A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with."

April 29, 2015

...

On this day in 1852 Peter Roget's Thesaurus was released to the public. Good thing!

...

On this day in 1945 Dachau concentration camp was liberated, and Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker. Hitler and Braun both committed suicide the following day.

...

Rick, from Rick and Morty- “Weddings are basically funerals with a cake.”

...

From Ikiru:

...

On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon announced the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal. A 23-year-old law student named Bill Barr was taking notes.

...

On this day in 1975, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended.

Vietnam, a tragedy. Certainly lead to some great movies though. It reminds me of the famous quote from Harry Lime in The Third Man.

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michaelangelo, da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

I'll take the cuckoo clock.

A larger-than-life, complicated person in his own right, Welles was drawn to larger-than-life people to portray. He based Citizen Kane, in large part, on the life of William Randolph Hearst, who happens to have been born on this day in 1863.

Hearst started the Spanish-American war with his newspaper. Maybe if he hadn't, we wouldn't have Citizen Kane, but we'd have something else instead, like a bald eagle toaster.

And without Vietnam, we wouldn't have Full Metal Jacket. My wild, unsubstantiated guess is that Kubrick would have finished his Holocaust film.

...

It's always good to reflect on the fact that Ho Chi Minh loved volleyball.

April 29, 2012

...

...

Director Fred Zimmerman was born on this day in 1907. He directed From Here To Eternity, High Noon, and he first brought Marlon Brando to the movies in The Men.

"Dialogue is a necessary evil."

...

Alfred Hitchcock left us on this day in 1980. His masterpieces are too numerous to name. I love the story that Peter Bogdanovich tells about him in his book, Who the Devil Made It:

“Well, it was a quite shocking, I must say – there was blood everywhere,” Alfred Hitchcock began suddenly from the rear of the elevator.  We were at New York’s St. Regis Hotel, heading down to the lobby. There was as light flush to his cheeks from the several frozen daiquiris he had just drunk in his suite. The elevator had just stopped, three people dressed for the evening had joined us, and immediately Mr. Hitchcock started to speak, sounding as though he were in midsentence and projecting in that careful and familiar TV tone of his. He went on, “There was a stream of blood coming from his ear and another from his mouth.

The people had recognized Hitchcock immediately, but now they seemed purposely to avoid looking at him.

He went right on, gazing beatifically ahead of him as the elevator stopped again and another well-dressed couple came aboard: “Of course, there was a huge pool of blood on the floor, and his clothes were spattered with it – oh! it was a horrible mess.” No one on the elevator, it seemed to me, was breathing. “Blood all around! Well, I looked at the poor man and I said, ‘Good God, what happened to you?’“ At that point the elevator doors opened onto the lobby and Hitchcock said, “Do you know what he told me?” and then paused. After a moment, and quite reluctantly, the other passengers moved out of the elevator and then looked back at the director as we walked away. After several foggy moments, I asked, “Well, what did he say?” and Hitch smiled benevolently, taking my arm, and said, “Oh, nothing – that’s just my elevator story.

...

The LA Riots began on this day in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers charged with beating of Rodney King. This is also the anniversary of Bill Hicks flying to England.

"I flew out of LA with everyone telling me to have a good time. I landed in England and saw a newspaper- "LA BURNS TO THE GROUND."

...

Andre Agassi joined us on this day in 1970. There's a story about him that I absolutely love. He noticed that when Boris Becker would stick his tongue in the corner of his mouth when he was serving, that meant he was either going to serve it down the middle, or wide, I forget. Andre made the connection, but he couldn't react too quickly or Becker would have known he was tipping his serve, so he had to only allow himself the slightest bit of a head start. He told Boris about this years later and blew him away.

.

Andre shares his birthday with Uma Thurman.

...

French mathematician and physicist, Henri Poincaré, was born on this day in 1854.

"To doubt everything, or, to believe everything, are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."

I think that's true. And do you know what he says about thought?

"Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

That's an unsettling thought.

...

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito, was born on this day in 1901. Part of the Japanese surrender package of World War II demanded that the emperor admit that he was not descended from God. Imagine that! In olden times, sure, but people still believe that kind of garbage in the 1900's? What am I talking about, is it really that different that people think Trump was anointed by God???

...

Jerry Seinfeld was born on this day in 1954. I love the story he told Louis CK about stealing his act. In Louis's joke, he's the angry, irritated, exasperated dad trying to get his family ready for a vacation. Seinfeld polished it up.

"I pack up everything in the car and get the kids clicked in to their car seats, make sure the wife is in. It's so much work to get ready for a vacation. I shut my wife's passenger side door, I walk around the car to get into my side. THAT's my vacation."

Seinfeld took out the anger, irritation and cut the exasperation by 75%. Louis CK said he Seinfelded it up.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZlVcGDAe19o

...

Daniel Day Lewis, arguably the greatest actor of our generation, joined us on this day in 1957.

...

Philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, left us on this day in 1951.

"Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself."

Hey, speak for yourself Wittgenstein!

...

On this day in 1993, the Phillies Milt Thompson jumped up over the fence in San Diego and save the game by catching what would have been a grand slam. At that moment I knew they were going all the way that season.

On this day, 5 minutes ago, the Phillies were no-hit by the Mets.

Glory and tragedy.

...

On this day in 1961, Willie Mays hit four home runs in a game, each one traveling over 400 ft. He was on deck when the giants made their third out.

...

...

Huffington Post- Facebook Group 'Praying' For President Obama's Death Passes One Million Members

How quaint.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/28/facebook-group-praying-fo_n_555227.html

April 29, 2010

...

NPR- The Death Of Facts In An Age Of 'Truthiness'

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/29/151646558/if-a-fact-dies-in-the-forest-will-anyone-believe-it

April 29, 2012

Postscript- 2012???

...

Cherophobia- the fear that feeling happiness will soon bring catastrophe

I just heard about this. Do I have it??? Possibly.

...

...

Marcus Aurelius- "Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been."

...

John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization- "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself."

...

Emerson- "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

...

Ali Wong- "Just accept that you're not a genius. Once I told myself that, I was finally able to write."

...

Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story- "I could not ignore their withering glances. They looked at me the way real vampires look at Count Chocula."

...

Philomena Cunk- "But perhaps the most famous form of wrestling the Greeks invented was mental wrestling. Philosophy is basically thinking about thinking, which sounds like a waste of time because it is, although a philosopher might argue that that time they've wasted never existed in the first place, at which point you'd probably give up talking to them and open a packet of biscuits."

...

Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings, 1969-1989- "Gradually the idea for a book began to take shape. It was to be a wildly ambitious and intolerant work, a kind of 'Anatomy of Restlessness' that would enlarge on Pascal's dictum about the man sitting quietly in a room. The argument, roughly, was as follows: that in becoming human, man had acquired, together with his straight legs and striding walk, a migratory 'drive' or instinct to walk long distances through the seasons; that this 'drive' was inseparable from his central nervous system; and, that, when warped in conditions of settlement, it found outlets in violence, greed, status-seeking or a mania for the new. This would explain why mobile societies such as the gypsies were egalitarian, thing-free and resistant to change; also why, to re-establish the harmony of the First State, all the great teachers - Buddha, Lao-tse, St Francis - had set the perpetual pilgrimage at the heart of their message and told their disciples, literally, to follow The Way."

...

John Waters- "Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library."

...

John Muir- "The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."

...

Einstein- "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

...

Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation:

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembered, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.

Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings.

...

A perfect joke by Jerry Seinfeld:

According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.