Walking Through Hell in a Gasoline Suit

Oh dear god, the Dodgers manager took out Clayton Kershaw after he pitched a perfect game through seven innings, because he was at his pitch count??? Sure, you don't want the guy to get all tuckered out!

If you aren't going to do something with spirit, just give up. Let that dumbass manager serve out the rest of Pete Rose's lifetime ban. 

Incidentally, Pete Rose was born on this day in 1941. You know what he said? "I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball."

That's the way to play baseball! That's the way to do anything!!!

More excellent Pete Rose quotes:

"Somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose."

"People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game."

"When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than (Ty) Cobb."

This is what Hank Aaron said about him:

"Does Pete hustle? Before the All-Star game he came into the clubhouse and took off his shoes and they ran another mile without him."

You know what Mickey Mantle said about him?

"If I had played my career hitting singles like Pete, I'd wear a dress." 

Mike Schmidt:

"Pete Rose is the most likable arrogant person I've ever met."

Pete Rose played in 745 consecutive games once, and 678 another time. Mantle played in maybe 13 straight games, always getting himself hurt, poor guy.

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Pete Rose with his idol, his dad.

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Great job by George Stephanopoulos this morning in his interview with Chris Sununu, Republican governor of New Hampshire. Sununu has been very critical of Trump for years. He takes nothing back, but has decided to support him because he believes a Republican administration would be better than a Democratic administration. Here's the summation at the end of the interview. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: So just to sum up, you would support him for president even if he is convicted in classified documents. You would support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You would support him for president even though you believe he's lying about the last election. You would support him for president even if he's convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?

SUNUNU: Yes, me and 51 percent of America.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor, thanks for your time this morning.

The best thing you can do in any interview or debate is to rephrase a person's position with clarity, in a way that they would agree with. Stephanopolis did that, illustrating Sununu's perfectly hypocritical current position. I wonder what Sununu's answer would have been, if he was asked whether Biden would deserve Democratic support if the situation was reversed.

Actually, I know his answer. Politicians pretend they can't distinguish between what is, and what should be. He would skirt the question and say that Biden would still have support. On the one hand, I'd agree. He would still have some support. On the other hand, I think there is absolutely no chance that Biden would have got the Democratic nomination. But that's beside the point. If those charges were leveled at Biden, he clearly wouldn't deserve support.

April 14, 2024

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Dan Rather- "Funny how Putin keeps losing but uses propaganda and sycophants to claim he’s winning. Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it exactly."

April 14, 20

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When I got home from work, Zuzu and a neighbor were both jumping on pogo sticks, one-handed, giving each other high fives. There's a lot wrong with the world, but that was proof positive evidence that we've all done some things right!

April 14, 2023

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There are 560,000 covid deaths and the covid deniers are freaked because there were six clotting cases in 6 million doses.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -Isaac Asimov

April 14, 2021

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I got a friend request today from somebody I don't like. That very rarely happens, almost never. There's almost nobody I don't like. You want to know why I don't like this person? It's easy. It's the number one reason that anybody doesn't like somebody. This person doesn't like me!

April 14, 2019

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I don't know who said it but it's worth repeating- "An apple a day, you die anyway."

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Had a piece of Juicy Fruit gum in honor of Milos Forman.

April 14, 2018

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Hitchens:

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of ‘prayer,’ as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend:

Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy.

Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half-buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self-cancelling.

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On this day in 1561, a celestial phenomenon was reported over Nuremberg. It was described as... an aerial battle!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg

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Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth on this day in 1865. 

He yelled, "Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged." I'm not so sure that they were.

The greatest president, the closest we've had to a philosopher king. I once visited his grave, and I was there by myself. Me and Abe Lincoln. Very strange experience. Is "spiritual" the correct word?

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Forty-seven years later, in 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg.

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Twenty-three years after that, in 1935, the Black Sunday dust storm swept across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. People thought it was the literal end of the world.

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The "Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight" was fought in El Paso, Texas on this day in 1881. The marshall, Dallas Stoudenmire, was responsible for three of the four fatalities. 

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Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens was born on this day in 1629. "I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably."

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Frank Serpico was born on this day in 1936, then got caught in the corrupt NYC police force, and changed it. A good apple. 

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Greg Maddux was born on this day in 1966. "The best pitchers have a short term memory and a bullet proof confidence."

One of the craziest baseball stats I've ever heard- he faced 20,421 and only had 3-0 counts on 310, and 177 of them were intentional walks!

Here's a great video of him dodging a tag at the plate!

https://fb.watch/knoSTZIZ9k/?mibextid=irwG9G

Wade Boggs on Greg Maddux- "It's like he's inside your mind with you. When he knows you're not going to swing, he throws a straight one. He sees into the future. It's like he has a crystal ball hidden inside his glove."

Greg Maddux on himself- “No need to steal the sign. I’ll tell you what I throw. It’s an 89 MPH sinker, and you won’t even swing at it.”

"You know why I'm a millionaire?' He said, 'Cause I can throw my fastball where I want to.' He said, 'You know why I got beachfront property in LA? Because I can change speeds."

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Biologist and author Rachel Carson left us on this day in 1964. In terms of conservation there is pre-Rachel Carson and post-Rachel Carson.

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

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French Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir died in 1986. 

"I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself."

Well at least someone loved her.

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Donut thief, Burl Ives, left us on this day in 1995.

The Doughnut Song

Well, I walked round the corner

and I walked round the block,

and I walked right into a bakery shop.

I picked up a doughnut

and I wiped off the grease,

and I handed the lady a five cent piece.

Well, she looked at the nickel

and she looked at me,

and she said "Hey mister, you can plainly see.

There's a hole in the nickel,

there's a hole right through."

Said I, "There's a hole in the doughnut too!

Thanks for the doughnut, good-bye!"

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Risk-taker Bernie Madoff died in prison on this day in 2021, mastermind of the world's largest Ponzi scheme. "Today, basically, on Wall Street, the big money is made by taking risks."

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The duck egg omelet with goat cheese I'm eating is just weird enough to make me really think about the places those ingredients originally come out of.

April 14, 2012

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My favorite book, The Grapes of Wrath, was first published on this day in 1939. Gives you a lot to think about.

"You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff."

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On this day in 1960, Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer resigned after their first game which they lost. He knew they were going to be terrible. He said, "I'm 49 and I want to live to see 50." They were indeed terrible- 59 wins, 95 losses, 36 games out of first. I said it earlier, if you aren't going to doing something with spirit, give up. He did!

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There's a certain type of sloth that eats a certain type of food that has its stoned all the time and then it doesn't even want to have sex. It's in the process of going extinct. It's an example of how our programmed desires can be hacked. Our drive is not external, having babies. Our drive is internal, i.e. dopamine and other chemicals, that tend to make us want to have babies.

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A great Christopher Hitchens moment:

https://youtu.be/mgVjKR0P_aU

Just because you wish there's a theme park, doesn't make it so.

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Patti Smith- Smells Like Teen Spirit

https://youtu.be/Kn7voloX6JI

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Mother Jones- Trump Is Now Threatening to Sabotage Millions of Insurance Plans

"Nice health plan you’ve got. Be a shame if something happened to it."

Ahhh, so the guy whose job is to execute the law is pledging to undermine the law. What do you do with a guy like that?

I can hear Spicer now... "it's his job to execute laws, and nobody kills more laws than this president. He has a phenomenal record of killing laws. Any law he doesn't like, he's going to execute."

Strange thing is...he doesn't need any democratic support.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/donald-trump-obamacare-cost-sharing-reductions

April 14, 2017

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Politico- White House says it won’t make visitor logs public

Nothing to see here folks... just the daily thing that would have gotten any other president impeached. You know what they say, "HIDE THE SWAMP!"

http://politi.co/2oyTuE6

April 14, 2017

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The songs from Mad Men have really stuck with me.

Kyu Sakamoto- Sukiyaki

https://youtu.be/C35DrtPlUbc

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Valley Girl- I Melt With You

https://youtu.be/FcEchaH6EJk

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Someone asked William F. Buckley why Bobby Kennedy wouldn't go on his show. Buckley responded, "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"

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Epictetus- "Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does come, we no longer exist."

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E. Edward Newton- “The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity.”

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Marcus Aurelius- "Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly."

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Wittgenstein- "I don't know why we're here, but I'm pretty sure it's not to enjoy ourselves."

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Jose Marti- "The first duty of a man is to think for himself."

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Vonnegut- “There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.”

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Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation- "I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs."

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Theodor Adorno- "Love is the power to see the similarity in the dissimilar."

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Richard Dawkins- "Evolution is just a theory? Well so is gravity but I don't see you jumping out of buildings."

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I realized that I read quotes from philosophers and watch stand-up bits the same way other people read the bible. For me, they reveal the true nature of the world and provide guidance on how to live.