Iggy Pop, Staring Into the Water, and Other Reflections

Mark Twain said he came in with Halley's comet in 1835 and he was ready to go out with it. He did just that, on this day in 1910.

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

No word on whether the cat is still living.

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Iggy Pop was born on this day in 1947. At the top of the charts was "Heartaches" by Ted Weems and His Orchestra with Elmo Tanner. He was born exactly 23 years after Ira Louvin, and 12 years before Robert Smith. (Robert Smith, by the way, was born on a Tuesday, and had to wait three days to be in love.)

“It was in the winter of my fiftieth vear

When it hit me

I was really alone

And there wasn't a hell a lot of time left

Every laugh and touch that I could get

Became more important

Strangely, I became more bookish And my home and study meant more to me 

As I considered the circumstances of my death

I wanted to find a balance between joy and dignity

On my way out

Above all, I didn't want to take any more shit

Not from anybody.”

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I love juxtapositions like this...

and juxtapositions like this reduce me to a puddle on the floor...

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It just hit me, maybe we do need seperate bathrooms due to transgender people... one for men, one for women, and one for people who are afraid that transgender people might sneak into their bathroom (but only one at a time in that bathroom.)

April 21, 2017

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Jeesh, Bill Maher, for what it's worth, just pointed out that 20% of Republicans were for bombing Syria when Obama was president, now it's at 80%. Democrats are the same before and after, about 40-40. Similar numbers on the economy and other issues... no real difference in a month or two. Republicans swing wildly in support, Democrats very close to the same before and after. Odd.

April 21, 2017

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Twain again, on the worst author in history- "Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

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Yesterday I asked Sloth for a good way to get rid of ants and he said, "Some people say cinnamon works, and cayenne pepper, but my best way is that I smash them."

April 21, 2010

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Did you ever wake up with your cat's butthole one inch away from your eye?

April 21, 2008

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Knowing that we're all going to die soon, never to exist again, makes writing my new stand up show so much more fun and carefree. -Ricky Gervais

For his last stand up special Ricky Gervais tweeted out, "What is the one thing that should never be joked about?" He then created his setlist out of the answers he received. The rule the respondants wanted to apply to everybody was uncoincidentally the thing that was most important to them personally. The variety of the answers proved their biases. Everybody was part of a minority saying the majority is wrong. What kind of a democracy is that? 

So what IS the one thing that should never be joked about? There's nothing that shouldn't be joked about. But if the joke isn't funny, it shouldn't have been told. As long as it's funny, tell it!

On Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Ricky Gervais told a perfect holocaust joke. 

A Holocaust victim went up to heaven and met God. He asked God if He wanted to hear a Holocaust joke. He told the joke and God didn't laugh. The Holocaust victim said, "Well I guess you had to be there."

Should that joke not have been made on principle? Of course not.

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Thanks a lot, whoever it was who recently informed me that there will be more Star Wars movies that come out after we all die. (I can't believe I hadn't already realized that myself.)

April 21, 2016

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Greg Legg played in the Phillies minor league system for 13 seasons, from 1982 to 1994. Between 1986 and 1987 he came up for 22 at bats and got 9 hits, a lifetime .409 batting average! A lesson in perseverance! He was born on this day in 1960.

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Come on, that's a word! Am I right???

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On this day in 1934, the famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster was printed in Scotland's Daily Mail. It was taken by surgeon and hoaxer, Robert Kenneth Wilson. Not a good combo of qualities.

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Environmentalist John Muir was born on this day in 1838.

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising.”

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Born in 1932, Elaine May turns 90 today. She was a trailblazing comedian of the 50's and 60's. I always wonder what comedy would be like today if you took out one trailblazer. Would have others picked up the slack, or would there just be a hole? What holes do we have now that nobody can see? Maybe don't answer that.

"You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, 'What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?' Does that ever make you anxious?"

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Indian cricketer, umpire, and mouthful, Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, was born on this day in 1945, as Hitler contemplated suicide in his bunker. 

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Prince died on this day in 2016. My two favorite songs of his are Cyndi Lauper's When You Were Mine, and Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares to You. 

Prince teaching a lesson in small talk:

Julia Stiles: After The Bourne Ultimatum came out, there was a premiere in London. Prince actually came to it, then got tickets for the cast to come see him perform. We were summoned into a room to meet him after the show. Matt said, “So you live in Minnesota? I hear you live in Minnesota.”

Damon: Prince said, “I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon.”

When You Were Mine by Cyndi Lauper:

https://youtu.be/-ILk2JEnVJQ

https://youtu.be/tB7qLUdUQE0

https://youtu.be/8I_Z3TcxQ24

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Robert Alton Harris was executed on this day in 1992, at the age of 39, for killing two teenage boys in a Jack In The Box parking lot.

His last meal: a 21-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two large Domino's pizzas without anchovies, ice cream, a bag of jelly beans, a six-pack of Pepsi, and a pack of Camel cigarettes.

His last words were a quote from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey:

"You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the grim reaper."

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Anti-death penalty activist, Sister Helen Prejean, was born on this day in 1939.

"People are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives."

In general, of course, but I'm not sure that applies to the truth psychopaths.

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What an obstacle course!

https://fb.watch/k2C-akLgAS/?mibextid=irwG9G

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This new video is from another planet.

Beastie Boys- Fight For Your Right Revisited

https://youtu.be/evA-R9OS-Vo

April 21, 2011

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Ben Franklin's daily schedule:

-Getting ready for the day: shower, breakfast, personal study, and prepare for work (3 hours)

-Morning work (4 hours)

-Review of current projects and to eat lunch (2 hours)

-Afternoon work (4 hours)

-Dinner and rest and wrapping up the day (4 hours)

Sleep (7 hours)

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Emma is the type of girl who, when listening to the first stanza of The Sounds of Silence, cringes and says, "Something left seeds in Paul Simon when he was sleeping."

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Roger Ebert- I was born inside the movie of my life

What a life this guy has had. I like what he said about the handful of times a wave came over him as reality realigned itself. And his parents telling him about dropping the bomb on Japan.

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-was-born-inside-the-movie-of-my-life

April 21, 2012

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The Onion- Trusted Sistine Chapel Janitor Convicted Of Sexually Abusing Last 4 Popes

http://www.theonion.com/articles/trusted-sistine-chapel-janitor-convicted-of-sexual,27934/

April 21, 2013

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I caught myself trying to think about this one a little too hard:

Noam Chomsky, Kurt Godel and Werner Heisenberg walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other and says “Obviously this is a joke, but how can we tell if it’s funny?” Godel replies “We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke.” Chomsky says “Of course it’s funny, you’re just telling it wrong.”

April 21, 2015

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NPR- N.Y. Judge Grants Legal Rights To 2 Research Chimps

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/21/401219719/n-y-judge-grants-legal-rights-to-2-research-chimps

Wow!

April 21, 2015

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Politico- More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study

Consider not taking medical advice from presidents. I hear this all the time- "What's the harm in taking it? It's already approved."

One example is right there in the headline- "MORE deaths."

If you need another example. .. people who need it are having trouble getting it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/malaria-drug-virginia-coronavirus-study-198590

April 21, 2020

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Important.

https://youtu.be/UTNi48f567E

April 21, 2020

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Mad Men's Robert Morse has left us at 90. The ghost of his character Bert Cooper might have pulled off the greatest feat in television history, planting the seed in Don Draper that the best things in life are free. He also turned up on his cross country road trip to enlightenment quoting Kerouac- “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

https://youtu.be/GxByspbrFRs

April 21, 2022

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We lost Vivian Maier on this day in 2009.

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Kerouac again- "Something, someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across the desert of life and was bound to catch us before we reached heaven. Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death."

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French dramatist, Jean Racine, left us on this day in 1699.

"Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."

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Gustave Doré, Donkeyskin (Peau d'Âne). Illustration from Perrault's Fairy Tales; 1867

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Soren Kierkegaard- "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

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Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death- "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility."

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Mike Tyson:"I had my oldest son who was 16 telling me he wanted to become a professional boxer. But stop there, you're stup!d, you went to a private school! You can't be a boxer, you've taken trips to Europe, you've been around the world. You can't be a fighter with that. You want to fight guys like me? Animals? I don't want my kids to go through that, it's degrading. Boxing, you do it when you have nothing. It's a lot of sacrifices, pain, suffering. I took the blows so that my children wouldn't have to do it. When I look at them, I see middle-class children, who went to school, who do what they want. Boxing means wanting to be the best, to dominate everyone. I don't want to put that kind of pressure on them."

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Mark Twain- "If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."

If you read that on the internet, you were misinformed.

If you read the previous sentence on the internet, you were correctly informed.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-read-newspaper-misinformed/

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Roger Sterling- “I told him to be himself. That was pretty mean, I guess.”

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Jean-Paul Sartre- "Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all."

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Robert Frost- "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

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Voltaire- "The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us."

Identity politics, anyone?

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John Amos Comenius- "Much can be learned in play that will afterwards be of use when the circumstances demand it."

That's how I feel about debate for the sake of debate.

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Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth- "Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours."

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Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason:

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond",

"What does?"

"This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

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Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation- "If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.' Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible."

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Einstein- "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

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Don and Roger are on a crowded elevator.

 Roger- "I watched the sunrise today. Couldn't sleep." 

Don- "How was it?"

Roger- "Average."

I love that!

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