More Reflections on Death, Humor, Children, Beauty, Lies, Hitler, and God
So sorry to hear that Gilbert Gottfried died today. I was running tonight listening to Norm MacDonald's interview with him. Maybe you know the one? If you google "Hitler's asshole," you'll be sure to find it. I was still going to run another few blocks but I started laughing too hard and had to walk the rest of the way. A true original. (Norm steals the whole bit with his "homophobe" comment at the end.)
Conan O'Brien- "I saw Gilbert perform in 1985 and when he entered to applause he said, “Thank you, thank you very much.” He then continued to say “thank you” repeatedly for ten full minutes. It was the nerviest, funniest thing I had seen. So sorry to lose this sweet and delightfully funny man."
Great paragraph from Gilbert Gottfriedcs New York Times obituary:
"In the late 1990s, at a Grammy Awards party at the Tavern on the Green in Manhattan, Mr. Gottfried picked up someone’s dropped food and put it on his plate. Dara Kravitz, the former owner of the food, who worked in the music industry, looked at him in disbelief. The two married in 2007 and later settled in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/arts/gilbert-gottfried-dead.html
April 12, 2022
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Aside from the health, social and political factors, the most disturbing thing about the coronavirus phenomenon is that companies can now advertise their brands on our faces. I say forget it!
April 12, 2020
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I'm modeling Daddy School on Plato's Academy with curriculum from The Republic- mathematics, natural science, astronomy, dialectics, philosophy, politics, gym and music. Haha. I was teaching them last night about the five platonic solids and told them that they were discovered over 2,000 years ago by a smart guy named Plato. They both burst out laughing, "Why did they call him Play-Doh??? Did he invent Play-Doh?"
Recognizing I need to play this lowbrow crowd, today for natural science I coaxed our bearded dragon, Bub, to poop in the bathtub and we tried to figure out what he ate. Right now for music we're listening to Blue Moon by Elvis, which I assume can also count as astronomy.
April 12, 2022
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Gretel and Zuzu have been obsessed with eating midnight snacks lately... they haven't done it, they just talk about it all the time. I told them that if they wake up at midnight they could get me, figuring they never ever wake up at midnight. Big miscalculation... if they wake and it's dark, they figure it's midnight, of course. So Zuzu burst in at 4, so excited... "Midnight snack!" I got her Graham crackers and milk. She went right back to sleep but I tossed and turned for about an hour. I was just about back sleep when Gretel burst in, so excited- "Midnight snack!"
April 12, 2019
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Trump claims he is a war president, right? This excerpt fom Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature might be relevant:
"The relationship between presidential intelligence and war may also be quantified. Between 1946 (when the PRIO dataset begins) and 2008, a president’s IQ is negatively correlated with the number of battle deaths in wars involving the United States during his presidency, with a coefficient of -0.45.212 One could say that for every presidential IQ point, 13,440 fewer people die in battle, though it’s more accurate to say that the three smartest postwar presidents, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton, kept the country out of destructive wars."
So just exactly how much lower is Trump's IQ than the average???
April 12, 2020
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Can you believe that the word "empathy" (the ability to understand and share someone else's feelings) is only about 100 years old? Once you give something a word, all of a sudden it becomes obvious. I bet the increase in its usage is correlated strongly with the rise in human rights.
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Noam Chomsky's linguistic advances include the idea that grammar is innate, everyone everywhere picks up the grammar they are exposed to, and grammar is very similar through all languages. So he says that we don't really "learn" grammar... it's more like grammar "grows." What a strange concept!
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Emma and I just saw a group of 20-some mountain gorillas in volcanoes national park in Rwanda... and I'm wondering how much longer people will be able to say that.
April 12, 2011
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Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays:
"People choose the book considered holy by the community in which they are born, and out of that book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others ... And so, even when we have a sacred book, we still choose as truth whatever suits our own prejudices."
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Tombstone of Sarah Hannah Jones in England: "Poet Philosopher and Failure"
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/poet-philosopher-failure-gravestone
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American Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter on this day in 1861. If nobody fired the first shot, there would have been no war. That would have been too bad because it was a just War. Firing the first shot is an act of violence, but isn't slavery as well?
My thoughts keep returning to Ukraine. They're fighting for their own country, but aren't they simultaneously fighting for democracy as the world knows it? If Putin wins, what next? If Ukraine wins, which they certainly will, they taught a brutal dictator of lesson about self-rule. But shouldn't we have all taught them that? I need to do something to fight for this just cause or I'm a hypocrite. If no Russians would have fired the first shot, there would be no war. But since they did, and since they continue, there is no option but to fight back. Am I right?
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H.L. Mencken- “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
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Bayard Rustin- "The proof that one truly believes is action."
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The Civil War's Great Locomotive Chase took place on this day in 1862. It was parodied by Buster Keaton in The General, an endlessly entertaining film.
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On this date in 1934, the strongest surface wind gust was recorded at 231mph on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office on this day in 1945, effectively launching 16-year-old Stanley Kubrick's photography career.
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On this day in 1955, the polio vaccine was declared safe and effective. Conservatives of the day demanded Jonas Salk's head on a pike.
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On this day in 1961, the first human traveled to outer space. Not a household name in the US- Yuri Gagarin. I wonder if the Russians ever heard of Neil Armstrong. I like the juxtaposition of these two quotes from Gagarin:
"I looked and looked but I didn't see God."
"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!"
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More anniversaries:
1954 - Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock”
1995 - Drew Barrymore flashed David Letterman in honor of his birthday
2000 - Metallica filed suit against Napstar
2012 - The game Candy Crush Saga was released on Facebook
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Henry Clay was born on this day in 1777.
"An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters."
Damn, that's a dangerous quote! I wonder where the tipping point is between being genuinely oppressed and someone just thinking they are oppressed. I think 90% of the country currently feels oppressed, but for the full spectrum of reasons.
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Ann Miller was born on this day in 1923. Here she is in the 1940's, and in 2001's Mulholland Drive.
She died in 2004.
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Australian rugby player Johnny Raper was born on this day in 1939. Umm, maybe stay away from him.
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Ed O'Neill was born on this day in 1946.
"This woman came in and she was so fat she actually had 3 smaller women orbiting around her.”
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David Letterman was born on this day in 1947.
"If your dog is constipated, why screw up a good thing?"
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Abbie Hoffman left us on this day in 1989.
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
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The Zen of Vomiting.
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I love this! Only about 1000 people came to a Trump rally in North Carolina, but like 10,000 came last time he was there. He told the crowd that he's the most honest man alive, and the crowd all busted out laughing! This gave away their true feelings. If they genuinely thought he was honest, there's no joke. But of course everyone knows he a bullshit artist. They won't admit to it in a debate about his Big Lie, but they all know.
Seems he's losing his grip on the narrative. Just now they see their wannabe emperor has no clothes? Or they knew he had no clothes, but liked it? Republican pollster Frank Luntz said nobody in Washington believes his lies, and that the public is growing bored.
John Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, roasted Trump at the Gridiron dinner over the weekend. "He's fucking crazy. He's not crazy enough to be put in an institution. But if he was already in one, he ain't getting out."
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Celebrity Gossip, Ali Wong's getting divorced, ooooooooh!
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Gretel said Hunter is a good name for a boy or a girl. I thought about making the joke, "Gatherer would be a better name for a girl." But then I'd have to explain that it's not a funny joke, the humor comes from it being told ironically, like I'm playing the dumbass who would make the joke to begin with. She's sharp, but jokes like that might be a decade away.
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Marion Albert Pruett murdered five people and was executed on this day in 1999 at the age of 49.
His last meal- Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza, four Burger King Whoppers, French fries, fried eggplant; fried squash, fried okra, a whole pecan pie, and three two-liter Pepsi bottles. Remarkably, he originally considered ordering a roast duck.
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Aside from the health, social and political factors, the most disturbing thing about the coronavirus phenomenon is that companies can now advertise their brands on our faces. I say forget it!
April 13, 2020
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The Onion- Biologists Confirm God Evolved From Chimpanzee Deity
“The holy chimp moved around on all fours, but its descendants eventually began walking upright to expend less energy while foraging across the infinite reaches of the universe. This of course led to the bipedalism of modern-day God.”
http://onion.com/RcHXXK
April 12, 2014
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Alternet- The Internet Is Killing Religion
"The Internet takes much of the mystery out of life, something that the church used to be able to fill; the church had all the answers. Today though, you only need to jump to your favorite search engine and the answers are in front of you."
http://www.alternet.org/belief/internet-killing-religion
April 12, 2014
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Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow- "The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will."
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Saul Bellow, Herzog- "Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is."
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Kinison- "Jesus was a cool dude. Give him a fish, he'd eat for a day. Teach him to fish, he'd eat for a lifetime. And if you crucify him, he'll be back for breakfast."
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Vonnegut- “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
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Edmond Husserl- "I must achieve internal consistency."
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Sam Harris, The End of Faith- "It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window."
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And maybe my favorite Dumb Short Joke of all time:
My grandfather survived pepper spray and mustard gas attacks in two wars. He came home to us a seasoned veteran.
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The Cemetery of the Sea
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