The Bright Side of Others Dying
Sometimes I lament the fact that Woody Allen will one day be gone, but then I look at the bright side. I might die before him.
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On this day in 2017, everybody joked that the president might squint at the solar eclipse, and then he did!
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Every once in a while... maybe once a year... it crosses my mind that with all his faults, Trump is ALSO the type of guy who makes fun of people's faces. I mean look at the guy! Imagine what he would say about the female version of himself. It would be devastating.
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Every once in a while... maybe once a year... it crosses my mind that with all his faults, Trump is ALSO the type of guy who makes fun of people's faces. I mean look at the guy! Imagine what he would say about the female version of himself. It would be devastating.
April 22, 2020
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The French New Wave film Le Samurai begins with this quote:
"There is no greater solitude than that of the Samurai, unless it be that of the tiger in the jungle... -Bushido, Book of the Samurai"
That fits the zeitgeist, doesn't it? First, it has to do with solitude. Second, has to do with tigers. Third, it's bullshit. Director John-Pierre Melville just made it up and played it off as fact.
April 22, 2020
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There was a big pile of Twizzlers at work for some reason so I ate one. Now my Facebook feed is polluted with Twizzlers ads. Not sure how they knew...
April 22, 2019
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John Waters was born on this day in 1946. He used to take acid and go watch ingler Bergman movies, and it shows! So many quotes from him. This one often rings through my head, not unlike a prayer.
"When they throw the water on the witch, she says, 'Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.' That line inspired my life. I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer."
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Perfect. Herzog describing when he found out that John Waters was gay.
https://youtu.be/m9P_sxaaMJE
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"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." That's Robert Oppenheimer, the man responsible for the creation of the atom bomb, quoting the Bhagavad-Gita. He was born on this day in 1904. I do not think he was a bad guy, yet I still wonder how many people might have been born today if he had never existed.
Oppenheimer again-
"In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains,
On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him."
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I was watching Ronan Farrow on the news this morning, trying to figure out why his haircut looked so familiar. Then it hit me, it's his mom's Rosemary's Baby haircut!
April 22, 2018
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From a global warming protest signs- "97% of engineers agree that the bridge ahead is going to collapse. 3% say not to worry. Would you keep driving?"
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Earth Day? How about Earth Year, every year?
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Photographer and environmentalist, Ansel Adams, left us on this day in 1984.
"A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety."
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Pavlov is at a bar enjoying a pint. The phone rings and he shouts "Oh! I forgot to feed the dog."
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Jack Nicholson was born on this day in 1937. He's not the best actor working, but he's the best actor living, and he might be the best actor ever. That said, he seems like an empty vessel. I just tried to find some interesting quotes from him and I couldn't. Here are two absolute duds from BrainyQuote:
"My motto is: more good times."
"Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world."
"Just let the wardrobe do the acting."
Jack Nicholson- greatest living actor, empty vessel.
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Bad news- my medicine gave me insomnia.
Good news- Three's Company marathon!
Bad news- season 8.
April 22, 2017
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Two things that separate me from 99% of the population- I never saw Terminator 2 and I never thought that cowbell thing from Saturday Night Live was funny.
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Some people say that internet brings out the worst in people... but maybe the people who use the internet as an outlet for their badness had no goodness in them to begin with. I don't know, what do you sons of bitches think?
April 22, 2011
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Yesterday a farmer, in order to clarify which Ben he was refering to, called me "Gorilla Ben."
April 22, 2010
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A buddhist monk approaches a burger foodtruck and says "make me one with everything." The buddhist monk pays with a $20 bill, which the vendor takes, puts in his cash box, and closes the lid. "Where's my change?" the monk asks. The vendor replies, "change comes from within".
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LAND RUSH. At noon on this day in 1889, several days after the birth of Hitler, thousands rush to claim land in present da Oklahoma. Within hours the city of Guthrie was formed with a population of at least 10,000. Woody Guthrie's ancestors certainly participated. He was born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.
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On this day in 1934, in Mercer, Wisconsin, the Dillinger and gang shot their way through a police trap at Little Bohemia Lodge.
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German Philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was born on this day in 1724. He is famous for his categorical imperative. Not a week goes by that I don't consider it.
"A person should act that the principle of one’s act could become a universal law of human action in a world in which one would hope to live. A person should treat other people as having intrinsic value, and not merely as a means to achieve one’s end."
He also believed that one should tell the truth in every circumstance.
If so, when the Gestapo comes to the door and asks if you're hiding any Jews, you should just tell them they're up in the attic. So bizarre that he thought this. Could have he really? There must be a reason.
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Actress Estelle Harris, famous for playing George Costanza's mother, was born on this day in 1928. She died just a few days ago.
"I go out for a quart of milk, I come home, and find my son treating his body like it it was an amusement park."
Perfection.
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Miguel de Cervantes left us on this day in 1616.
"In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd."
I have been playing sports multiple times where I thought something was impossible, attempted the absurd, and somehow made the impossible possible. It's the strangest feeling but you can do it.
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Richard Nixon died on this day in 1994, a few weeks after Ace of Base's I Saw the Sign topped the charts, and a few weeks before it topped the charts again. He was born a few weeks before William Howard Taft's peaceful transfer of power to Woodrow Wilson. By all accounts, William Howard Taft was very heavy, yet never publicly made fun of people's faces while running for president.
Excerpt from Hunter S. Thompson obituary of Nixon- "If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a President. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants every morning."
Under Nixon, we created the EPA. Good thing, but certainly he had an ulterior motive.
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Thompson- "I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal."
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Watching the Phils and working on an equation with Emma tonight. I drank too much wine and she's doing most of the working.
April 22, 2011
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Two things that separate me from 99% of the population- I never saw Terminator 2 and I think that cowbell thing from Saturday Night Live isn't funny.
April 22, 2011
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Some people say that internet brings out the worst in people... but maybe the people who use the internet as an outlet for their badness had no goodness in them to begin with. I don't know, what do you sons of bitches think?
April 22, 2011
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I'm at the doctor's office, and a nurse just came in and said, "Oh I can see that you're not feeling so good."
I told her I felt fine, it was just that I've had an occasional very bad cough since I was sick a couple weeks ago. I almost added, "I guess I must just always look awful." I'm so disappointed in myself for not pulling the trigger on that one.
April 22, 2022
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It's former Phillies' second baseman Mickey Morandini's birthday, born in 1966. It's impossible to read his name without hearing Harry Kalas's lyric voice- "Mi-ckey Mor-an-di-ni."
I'm not sure if Harry Kalas ever read Nabokov's Lolita, but if so, I can guarantee that this would be his favorite passage:
"For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny—I mean, a small German hare."
Vladimir Nabokov was also born on this day in 1899.
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Roger Sterling- "Nobody knows what I’m doing. It’s good for mystique."
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It's not actually my story, it's Sloth's... and it's certainly not for all types, but who cares. Read on. Sloth went down to Washington DC yesterday with a bunch of farmers from the co-op to protest nanotechnology and putting microchips in animals. In the senate building Sloth told the farmers he'd race them up to their floor- he took the elevator and they took the stairs. Sloth got in the elevator, a guy got in with him, the door shut. Guess who the guy was. McCain! Imagine- Sloth's riding an elevator with just him and McCain... just him and the guy who was nearly the most powerful person in the world. He said he didn't know what to do... he wanted to punch him in the face. He settled for leaving a loud raunchy fart. McCain looked at him as if to say "you god damn asshole." That might be the first time I ever agreed with McCain*. I know exactly what he was going through- I sit a mere 5 feet away from that rotten bastard half of my waking hours. I can guarantee you, Dear Reader, what McCain had to endure in those few seconds was worse than the five years he spent in that Vietnamese prison camp**. In other news, I don't know who won the race up to their floor.
*belief in global warming, hatred of Dick Cheney, love of John Stewart notwithstanding.
**but not quite as bad as those poor civilians McCain dumped that napalm on to begin with.
April 22, 2009
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Betty Page was born on this day in 1923.
"I was not trying to be shocking, or to be a pioneer. I wasn't trying to change society, or to be ahead of my time. I didn't think of myself as liberated, and I don't believe that I did anything important. I was just myself. I didn't know any other way to be, or any other way to live."
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Jack Nicholson's seventy-five today. I think about this scene often.
https://youtu.be/6wtfNE4z6a8
April 22, 2012
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Crucial viewing for parents. Would your kid eat the marshmallow? More importantly, can they delay instant gratification for a preferable future?
https://youtu.be/M0yhHKWUa0g
April 22, 2013
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PBS, Nova- Physicists Say Consciousness Might Be a State of Matter
http://to.pbs.org/1i6v2AE
April 22, 2014
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The Onion- Clogged Drain Causes Orioles’ Dugout To Overflow With Chewing Tobacco Spit
Almost puked.
http://trib.al/Qob56A3
April 22, 2017
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Wall Street Journal- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islam’s Most Eloquent Apostate
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-islams-most-eloquent-apostate-1491590469
April 22, 2017
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Is belief in the scientific method based on faith? "Science works, bitches!"
https://youtu.be/0OtFSDKrq88
April 22, 2017
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It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.
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Stanley Kubrick's NY Street Pictures
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Oppenheimer again- "It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them."
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Charles Bukowski- “I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.”
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Josh Billings- "Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected."
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Seneca- "Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
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John Muir- "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."
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Jean-Paul Sartre- "You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine."
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Einstein- "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
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Michael Shermer- "In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious."
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Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation- "You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world."
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Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting in a cafe revising his first draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I would like a cup of coffee please. No cream." the waitress replies, "I'm sorry sir, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?"
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