A Good Day For People Being Born- Mortality and Immortality

A friend of mine has an experience to do something creative on some theme each week for 52 weeks. This is the first week the theme is "mooner." I wrote this:

Decades of Hairy Callused Buttcheeks

My grandma died a decade ago at the age of 95, about a decade after my dad and I mooned her as she left a family get-together.

A decade prior, I had Harry Kalas announce her 75th birthday during a Sunday afternoon Phillies game.

She lived on a farm many decades earlier, planting seeds, milking cows, picking crops, and most definitely spanking my dad's buttcheeks raw for acting out of line.

Callused buttcheeks be damned, decades later, my dad and I carried on the family tradition of acting out of line, once again in case you missed it the first time, mooning her as she left a family get-together where we watched a different Phillies game, also announced by Harry Kalas.

April 3, 2024

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Possible tragedy today. We had a meeting set with our bankers at 1230 but they didn't show up. Weird, because bankers are never late. We couldn't get a hold of them. After a while we went back to work. It turns out a tree fell and hit their car when they were on the way to us. Looks bad. We don't know how they are. The timing on that, jeez. You never know...

April 3, 2024

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Public service announcement: When someone is losing an argument, they change the meaning of all the important words. A current fashionable word to change to meaning of is violence. 

"When you made me feel bad, that was actually violence." 

This ridiculous practice cheapens actual violence in an attempt to win an unwinnable argument.

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Chris Rock told Howard Stern years ago that one of his high school bullies ending up working on a film that he was directing. Chris didn't realize until he saw him. He just gave the guy a nod and a look. He then told Howard:

"Did you ever watch Bugs Bunny? When did Elmer Fudd get REALLY mad at Bugs Bunny? It wasn't when he shot him, or hit him over the head with an anvil. It was when he kissed him. That's when he would lose his mind. So when somebody does you wrong, give them a kiss."

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It's always been oddly comforting to consider that I have been dead for an eternity before I was born. It just crossed my mind though, the big bang was only 13 billion years ago. Not to split hairs, but I've only been dead for 13 billion years, not longer. Before that, there was no time. Isn't it true though that there was also no time immediately before I became conscious? So which is it, was there no time before the big bang, or before my unconsciousness?

April 3, 2023

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Inspired by the fact that yesterday was the birthday of 2001, Gretel, Zuzu and I started watching it. It was released April 2, 1968. We have watched it a few times over the years.

Gretel said she had a nightmare about the obelisk once. I asked what it was about, and she said she isn't telling. Damn!

Zuzu is 6, and the film motivated her to ask how there could even be a God, because he has no parents, so nobody could have made him, so he couldn't exist.

Haha. I just saw this Ricky Gervais quote earlier in the day: 

"Let there be me." -God, just before creating himself out of nothing.

We haven't watched 2001 for several years but both kids remembered some pretty specific details. The dawn of violence, the bone getting thrown up and turning into the spaceship, the fact that the daughter was having a birthday and asked for a bush baby, that the man gets old at the end, goes back to Earth and he's a baby. Gretel said she hated the ending. Yeah well, maybe someday. 

They love the monkey section, but then for a bit get very bored when the people start talking. They intuitively grasp a lot of the symbolism. I'm pretty impressed by them.

April 3, 2022

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I lost 10 lb so far this year. I credit it to drinking at least a quart of water a day, not buying ice cream, good exercise, tracking everything I eat on an app, and incomprehensible stress and anxiety. It's working out pretty well.

April 3, 2020

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There are still some people saying things like, "Our fear of the virus is more dangerous than the virus itself." Jason Voorhees would have their heads lopped off within the first 5 minutes of any Friday the 13th. 

I mean, everybody remembers that classic line from Jaws- "We're gonna need a bigger boat, or simply learn to not fear 25ft great white sharks."

Let's check out what those feral kids are doing in the corn.

Odds are that we're not going to be chopped up by chainsaws and put in some stew, it's like a billion to one, so I'm going to just check behind this bed sheet serving as a door and see if anybody in the back of this broken down store can help me with my flat tire.

Sure, Chianti and fava beans sounds nice, but what's the main dish?

I'm going to stick around and find out what this straggly-haired bloated corpse from room 237 is laughing about. It must be something funny!

Like any animal, we should use our initial fear to react appropriately in the interest of self-preservation. And if that's not good enough for them, then they should act in the preservation of others.

April 3, 2020

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Can't decide which book to read next...

April 3, 2021

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I just leaned in to kiss my baby and in the span of two seconds she honked my nose, poked a finger in my eye, raked my eyebrows, tore at my lips and latched onto my beard. I'm renaming her The-Second-Coming-of-Moe-Howard Kreider.

April 3, 2014

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Can you believe that in only 1895, a libel trial brought by Oscar Wilde began, resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality? That is recent for that kind of stuff and it was nowhere near over.

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On this day in 1955, the American Civil Liberties Union announces it would defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges. Nowadays, apparently they believe some free speech should be curbed.

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It was on this day in 1960 that Elvis records what he thought was his best song- It's Now or Never. I agree with him!

Schopenhauer- "The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves."

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On this day in 1967, Roger Ebert became a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech on this day in 1968, as a premonition for getting assassinated the next day.

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The Unabomber was captured on this day in 1996.

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On this day in 2014, as a 40-year-old man, I ate a whole mouthful of Sour Patch Kids. As I swallowed them I thought, "there will never be a day that I don't love candy." Then I thought, "sure there will, one day you'll be dead." (I'm certain that Sour Patch Kids are a metaphor for something in that little story.)

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Iron Eyes Cody, was born on this day in 1904. For what it's worth, he was an Italian-American playing a Native American with a teardrop symbolizing the destruction of the land. Nevertheless, the ad worked. It still works. When it aired in 1971, was litter even in the popular lexicon?

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Fatalist Doris Day was born this day in 1922. Que sera, sera? What kind of attitude is that? Not the kind that gets your species to the moon, that's for sure!

A Guy Is a Guy:

https://youtu.be/ei_I_poCNFI

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Brando was born on this day in 1924, then crawled along the edge of a straight razor until 2004. I was driving Route 66, before smart phones, and saw the news that he was gone on the front of a USA Today. You simply have to love somebody who has a page and a half of their autobiography written about their pet raccoon, and a significant section on an orangutan he met once.

Werner Herzog had this to say about his performance in Viva Zapata:

“An enormous, virile power is lurking. He talks very, very quietly, [but] you know this is going to be big… something which only occurs in myth, which only occurs in collective dreams, but completely convincingly. That’s where cinema is at its best — when it is able to transform history into something mythical.”

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Gus Grissom was born on this day in 1926. If not for an electrical fire, everyone agrees that he would have been the first person to step on the moon, remembered until the end of humanity. They couldn't have done it without his sacrifice.

And on this day in 2023, the announced the people who will be voyaging to the Moon in the Artemis missions.

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Primate Jane Goodall came into the world on this day in 1934. If evolution is real, why hasn't she turned into a robot yet? Did you ever think about that, huh??? Maybe because you aren't an idiot.

Jane Goodall's Proust Questionnaire. Remember when we used to do all those questionnaires? That was enjoyable.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/08/13/jane-goodall-proust-questionnaire/

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A. C. Grayling, English philosopher and academic, was born on this day in 1949.

"Religion and science have a common ancestor - ignorance."

"Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life."

"Mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life."

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Eddie Murphy was born on this day in 1961. He said, "The advice I would give someone is not to take anyone's advice."

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Mike Ness was born on this day in 1962, with Connie Francis's Don't Break the Heart That Loves You at the top of the charts. I would have thought he would have heard the angels sing by now.

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Jennie Garth couldn't actually be 50 years old today could she??? I guess that means Gabrielle Carteris is like 85 by now.

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Another notable birthday - Bill Bast (1931)

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On this day in 1882, the coward Robert Ford killed Jesse James.

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Another notable deathday- Graham Greene (1991)

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Dr. Roland Griffiths doesn't have much time left but he's making the most of it. 

Question:

So you have this sense, near the end of your life, of waking up to life’s real meaning. What’s the most important thing for everyone else who’s still asleep to know?

Griffiths:

"I want everyone to appreciate the joy and wonder of every single moment of their lives. We should be astonished that we are here when we look around at the exquisite wonder and beauty of everything. I think everyone has a sense of that already. It’s leaning into that more fully. There is a reason every day to celebrate that we’re alive, that we have another day to explore whatever this gift is of being conscious, of being aware, of being aware that we are aware. That’s the deep mystery that I keep talking about. That’s to be celebrated!"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/03/magazine/roland-griffiths-interview.html

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Fareed Zakaria nailed my feelings of Trump. Sure, he's guilty, but it's a very old charge (possibly pass the statute of limitations) and it feels like instead of starting with the crime and finding the person, they started with the person and tried to find a crime. The other crimes he's charged with are orders of magnitude more significant.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/opinions/donald-trump-indictment-gps-fareed-zakaria/index.html

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Just a little reminder that Mike the Headless Chicken existed.

https://youtu.be/LqDjRCHyjTY

April 3, 2011

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Roger Ebert- A Leave of Presence

Oh no, terrible news...

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-leave-of-presence

April 3, 2013

Postscript- Little did I know that he would leave us the following day.

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Huffington Post- 16 Shocking Allegations In Scientology Documentary 'Going Clear'

Great documentary! What this article doesn't capture is the Nazi imagery and Tom Cruise's maniacal personality.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6939318

April 3, 2015

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Happy Easter

https://youtu.be/BR8RQptgv2U

April 3, 2015

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McSweeney's- AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE LAST FEW DAYS OR SO

by RACHEL GARBUS

Do YOU remember a time before we planted Doritos in the backyard for the spring harvest... before our roommates had mouse skulls on pikes delineating their territory?

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-oral-history-of-the-last-few-days-or-so

April 3, 2020

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The Hill- Trump says he opposes mail-in voting for November

Trump is worried that if it's easier for people to vote, it will hurt his chances. Let that sink in. Does it deny any of the basic tenets the country was founded on?

And remember all of the lines, hours long, in democratic voting precincts. And forget that in billions and billions of votes, there's been like 18 instances of voter fraud. So what could his reason possibly be???

http://hill.cm/GpsH4Wt

April 3, 2020

Postscript- Ummm, I might have been ahead of the curve on this!

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Carl Sagan- "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

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Edgar Allen Poe- "I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him."

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John Lennon- "Every song I've ever written has been absolute torture… except for the ten or so songs the gods give you and that come out of nowhere."

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Neil DeGrasse Tyson- "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

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Walt Whitman:

O captain! My Captain!

Our fearful trip is done.

The ship has weather'd every wrack

The prize we sought is won

The port is near, the bells I hear

The people all exulting

While follow eyes, the steady keel

The vessel grim and daring

But Heart! Heart! Heart!

O the bleeding drops of red

Where on the deck my captain lies

Fallen cold and dead.

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John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces- "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul."

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Richard Dawkins- "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

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Dumb Short Joke of the Day:

Have you heard about those new corduroy pillows? They're making headlines.

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Oh man, I miss Mad Men. I used to re-watch the whole series each year before the new season began. It ended in 2015, and I haven't watched it since. I'm way overdue.

Rachel Mencken- "The inevitable flow of time will wash away everything we know... the nature of existence is fleeting."

Don Draper- "There's no reason to fear what we can't control. When existence ends, so does fear."

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