Amos Bin Laden

So apparently Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage tonight, by someone who had a fake gun. What are we to make of that? 

Reminds me of what Janai Nelson of the NAACP wrote after Will Smith attacked Chris Rock- “the way casual violence was normalized tonight by a collective national audience will have consequences that we can’t even fathom in the moment.”

At the time I wrote that those supporting the violence seemed eager to return to a Machiavellian nightmare of life being, "nasty, brutish and short." 

In keeping with that spirit, a Supreme Court draft leaked today as well, proving that they seem eager to overturn Roe vs. Wade, seeming to assure back alley abortions for victims of rape, incest and other tragic circumstances, or at least for those who can't afford to travel to a state where they can get the care they need.

As luck would have it, it's Nicollo Machiavelli's birthday too, born in 1469. We do at times seem to be returning to that brutish past.

I have hope though. This is still the best time to be alive. Do you think Dave Chappelle would rather be a comedian in 1469, 1950 or 2022? For that matter, would you rather need an abortion in 1469, 1950 or 2022? 

(Man, that's one harsh game of "Would You Rather?"!)

Sure, the preferred answer might be 2015. Yes, there's turmoil now, but this abortion thing has the potential to mobilize the left the way the right has been mobilized for years. Why were they so nonchalant about giving up a Supreme Court pick in 2016? No more, hopefully. The eventual decision is bound to have an equal and opposite reaction.

And in spite of it all, I don't think comedians are going to be regularly attacked or need to live in fear. If this dissuades someone from their dream of becoming a comedian, to quote Dave Chappelle, "you may have never had a dream. Come on, man, that’s a brittle spirit." 

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People are in an uproar over this Roe vs. Wade thing. Not me, I've been in something like slow burn uproar now for years. This was the inevitable result of Democrats being complacent in 2016. Even if you don't like the nominee, you vote for the justices. 

Everybody's quoting Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We wouldn't even have to, if she would have said the most important thing of her life- "I've decided to retire." 

I've said it before: Ruth Bader Ginsburg- Excellent Supreme Court Justice, Epic Failure as an actuarial statistician.

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The Belgian writer May Sarton was born on this day in 1912. From Journal of a Solitude:

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

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Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons was born on this day in 1934.

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-wee

Walk, walk, walk, walk

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh

Walk like a man

Oh, how you tried to cut me down to size

Tellin' dirty lies to my friends (ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh)

But my own father said give her up, don't bother

The world isn't comin' to an end

(He said)

Walk like a man, talk like a man

Walk like a man, my son

No woman's worth crawlin' on the earth

So walk like a man, my son

Oh wee ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-wee-ooh

Walk, walk, walk, walk

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh

Bye, baby, I don't-a mean maybe

Gonna get along somehow (ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh)

Soon you'll be cryin' on account of all your lyin'

Oh yeah, just look who's laughin' now

(I'm gonna)

Walk like a man, fast as I can

Walk like a man from you

I'll tell the world, forget about it, girl

And walk like a man from you

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-wee-ooh

Walk, walk, walk, walk

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh

Walk, walk, walk, walk

Walk, walk, walk, walk

Ooh-wee-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-wee-ooh

What a knockout opening for The Wanderers:

https://youtu.be/PmT2zcDcdh0

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Prescient quote from birthday girl, Christina Hendricks, as Mad Men's Joan Harris: 

"I want to burn this place to the ground."

Christina was born on this day in 1975.

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Roger Sterling- “Not to get too deep before the cocktail hour, but do I need to remind you of the finite nature of life?”

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Stonewall Jackson's arm was amputated on this day in 1863, after being wounded in battle the day before. Apparently it was a significant enough of an arm that it justified burial with a gravestone. The rest of him caught pneumonia and died a week later.

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They say some dogs are smart so you have to keep them occupied. You know how to occupy a really smart dog, like an Einstein-level dog? Just let them chew on some bone for a while. Get them a cow femur and it'll occupy them for a year. They'll be experimenting on it's time and space the whole time. Mostly by chewing on it.

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I was in the car with Gretel & Zuzu yesterday and they were playing a game they made up called Ding. They say "ding" every time they see a sign, a flag, a pole, a mailbox, a light, or the color purple. So it's just, "ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding." For the vast majority of my life that would have been an intolerable hellscape, as it might seem to you, but I can say that I enjoyed it. I even chimed in once Zuzu changed the rules to include power lines.

May 3, 2021

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Funniest Thing I Never Said, from May 3, 2011

Sloth and I were at the co-op’s board meeting today- just me and him and 10 Amish farmers. Bin Laden’s death came up and someone asked if they heard that bin Laden’s dad had 57 children. I thought of the funniest thing that could be said at that moment, but I knew it was inappropriate. I thought for another second and realized that although it was probably inappropriate it would still be acceptable, although just barely. As I decided to say it I realized that the moment had passed, and I’d have to wait patiently for hours before I could even tell Sloth. He thought it was hilarious, and now I’ll tell it to you. The joke was- “I had no idea bin Laden was Amish.” 

Looking back now I have no doubt the place would have erupted in laughter. As it died down I could have added, “I should have known by the beard, by why didn’t he wear a straw hat?”

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The Onion, May 3, 2016

Study Finds Sexism Rampant In Nature

"The UCSD study estimates that in 2001 alone, more than 170 trillion cases of abuse occurred in the world's forests, grasslands, and oceans—all of them unreported."

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Emma is going to be so mad when she sees what flavor of ice cream I bought!

(Sweet Potato Pecan Pie)

May 3, 2014

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Pather Panchali was released on this day in 1955.

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Newsflash! Marlon Brando is not dead. He's alive and well and living inside the characters of his old movies. The Wild One is on TCM.

May 3, 2009

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Alex Konstad

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On this day in 1715, Edmond Halley could have become a god to 99.92% of our ancestors when he predicted a total solar eclipse to within four minutes accuracy.

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As mentioned, Italian historian and philosopher, Niccolò Machiavelli, was born on this day in 1469. We've come a long way since then! Damn, a list quotes from him is like a stroll through humanity's chamber of horrors. This one caught my particular attention: "Never was anything great achieved without danger."

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Anti-Machiavellian folk singer, Pete Seeger, was born on this day in 1919. 

"The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in."

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Joan Harris again:" I'm not a solution to your problems. I'm another problem."

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Never a problem, Ann B. Davis from The Brady Bunch was born on this day in 1926. She puts me in mind of a limerick:

There was a young fellow named Bob 

Who explained to his friends with a sob, 

"The size of my phallus 

Was just right for Alice 

Till the night that she bit off the knob."

But seriously, she's never been publicly romantically linked to anyone.

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TCM's Robert Osborne was born on this day in 1932. A library burned down the day that he left us.

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Former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, was born on this day in 1898. She landed a zinger on somebody.

"Don't be humble, you're not that great."

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Ron Popeil was born on this day in 1935- but wait, there's more.

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Bing Crosby was born on this day in 1903. I always need to remind myself of this advice:

"Oh, listen a lot and talk less. You can't learn anything when you're talking."

He also said:

"Death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others. Which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes. Just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir."

Oh wait, my mistake. That wasn't Bing crosby. That was his granddaughter, Denise Crosby, as Star Trek The Next Generation's Tasha Yar. That seemed a little too philosophical and technological for Bing Crosby.

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Doug Henning's mother performed the most incredible magic trick in the history of humankind on this day in 1947, when she brought him into the world. He was a magician, illusionist, escape artist and politician. In other words, his life was centered around bullshitting. 

Wait, he ran for office under the Natural Law Party??? What the hell is that? Did he conjure a new political party out of a hat? 

His life ended due to a failed magic trick. He was so into transcendental meditation that he thought it could cure his liver cancer. 

His life is purpose was to bring more wonder to the world. Wonder and lies, but wonder nonetheless.

"Now there was no wonder in the Statue of Liberty illusion because he, Copperfield, attempted to do something so large that it stretched the credibility of the audience to the point where most people didn't believe any of it anymore."

Magician fight!

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Keith Haring was born on this day in 1958.

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Diana Dors left us on this day in 1984.

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They say a broken clock is true twice a day. Not necessarily. Maybe it's perpetually 10 minutes fast, or maybe it's hands fell off. 

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On a blog entry concerning religion, a commenter told Roger Ebert "If God didn't exist there would be be no atheists." Ebert responded "Would there still be believers?"

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Today I'm exactly as old as Marilyn Monroe was when she died.

http://dead.atyourage.com/

May 3, 2010

Postscript- I miss that site!

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Howie Chong- WHY IT MAKES SENSE TO BIKE WITHOUT A HELMET

I hate bike helmets... trying not to fall victim to confirmation bias, but this article does indeed make great points.

http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets

May 3, 2014

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Old bane potato chip ice cream sounds flat out disgusting, but it's fantastic!

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/desserts/old-bay-and-potato-chip-ice-cream/

May 3, 2014

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Interesting email exchange between Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris in which they can't even agree on what they disagree about. Strangely captivating. I'm with Harris on this. Or am I? Do I just not understand Chomsky or is he not understandable? Agree with him or not, Harris has a way of breaking down an argument to its essence, where Chomsky feels like he's obfuscating. If you have the time I'd be interested to here what you think.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

May 3, 2015

Postscript- I lost some respect for Chomsky go over this exchange. Never thought about him the same again. Doesn't seem like he wants to have an honest debate.

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Vox- Mad Men recap: 11 times this episode mirrored the show's past

Best recap!

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/27/8502013/mad-men-recap-review-time-and-life

May 3, 2015

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The Hill- Trump praise for Kim Jong Un baffles South Koreans

Don't be baffled South Koreans, there's a simple answer. He just says dumb things.

http://hill.cm/4qoOjCh

May 3, 2017

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538- The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election

Excellent insight! I don't know what there is to disagree about in this article.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/

May 3, 2017

Postscript- I've set it all along, nobody deserves more credit for Trump's election than Comey

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The Hill- Trump’s quest to stop bad media coverage threatens our Constitution

"However, the First Amendment was not given to us by a president. We gave it to ourselves to protect us against presidents (and others) who are tired of criticism."

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/331524-trumps-quest-to-curb-freedom-of-the-press-is-at-odds

May 3, 2017

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Washington Post- Trump called Andrew Jackson ‘a swashbuckler.’ The Cherokees called him ‘Indian killer.’

The president's example of a person with a big heart, a moral guide.

"On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which Native Americans say was a form of legalized ethnic cleansing. The act forced more than 60,000 Native Americans from their lands in the Southeast United States, clearing the way for white pioneers. Native Americans were forced to walk hundreds of miles to resettle west of the Mississippi River. Historians believe more than 15,000 died on the difficult journey."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/03/trump-called-andrew-jackson-a-swashbuckler-the-cherokee-called-him-indian-killer

May 3, 2017

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IFLScience- You Can Zoom Right Into This Incredible 1.6 Gigapixel Photo Of The Small Magellanic Cloud

Holy cow!

http://www.iflscience.com/space/you-can-zoom-right-into-this-incredible-16-gigapixel-photo-of-the-small-magellanic-cloud/

May 3, 2017

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The Onion- George Lucas Recalls Peter Mayhew Ad-Libbing Decision To Play Character As Nonverbal, Fur-Covered Monster

“Originally, I intended for Chewbacca to be a loquacious, somewhat uptight academic who would converse at length about a number of convictions, tenets, and principles, but Peter, off the top of his head, brilliantly portrayed the giant, hairy creature as a formidable growling colossus,” said Lucas in a statement memorializing the actor, recalling how Mayhew had effortlessly transformed the rigid, erudite Wookiee into a massive, grunting beast.

https://entertainment.theonion.com/george-lucas-recalls-peter-mayhew-ad-libbing-decision-t-1834510874

May 3, 2019

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Intelligencer- How to Live With Covid-19 by Andrew Sullivan 

Month-old article (translation, feels like years old), but imagine something like this today:

"I’m also reminded of one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of the Black Death. In a northern English town called Eyam, in 1666, the local tailor received a batch of cloth from London that turned out to be infected by fleas carrying the disease. Suddenly, people started dropping dead. Two Christian pastors then made an extraordinary decision: They would quarantine the entire town, forbidding anyone from leaving — so that the plague would spare their neighbors and county. They kept up that quarantine, even as families were wiped out, and never left, losing more than half of their residents, a higher proportion than even London. But the rest of the region was spared thousands of deaths."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/04/andrew-sullivan-how-to-live-with-the-coronavirus.html

May 3, 2020

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The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered "Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

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Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness- "The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it- basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."

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Thales- "Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing."

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Einstein- "I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right."

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Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray- "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

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Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story- "As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to."

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Henry Miller- “To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power."

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Joan Harris once more: "But that's life. One minute you're on top of the world, the next minute some secretary's running you over with a lawn mower."

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A quote from my Bible!

Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."

Addendum

Myspace Blog

May 3, 2008

Saturday night at the liquor store, coming down

As I was paying for a bottle of wine at the liquor store the clerks were talking about the Kentucky Derby. One said that it was coming on at 5 and they might be able to find it on the radio. The other said it would be really neat if they could listen to it and that she hoped none of the horses got hurt.

Every so often I feel a deep down profound sadness for the empty state of the world... or perhaps I should say the country. A society in decline. These clerks weren't horse-racing enthusiasts or anything- it was just that there was "something." Some thing to fill the emptiness. Tonight it was the Kentucky Derby, tomorrow who knows, maybe Barbara Bush will die and we'll have to hear about it for days. The thing is- try to fill that emptiness up with something trivial and the juxtaposition makes the emptiness seem even larger. Hopefully these clerks will die in their sleep sometime before the realization hits them.

The one clerk said she wanted the Brown horse to win. I knew what she was talking about, the favored horse is named Big Brown... but sometimes I like to be a playful smart-ass, so as I was walking to the door I asked her, "Aren't all of the horses brown?"

She actually scoffed, sneared and turned away from me, then turned back and said in a loud sarcastic tone, "Come back again sometime!" Hey, I was only pretending to be a smart-ass!

I left laughing. Nope, nothing trivial about laughter. It's recognition of, and communion with, the absurd- and when you're living in a society in decline it sometimes makes it all worthwhile.

Now to watch baseball... nothing trivial about that. Or is there?

.................................................

P.S. It turns out that one of the horses collapsed during the race and was euthanized afterward... I wonder if the clerks found it on the radio.

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And another, same date.

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I’m not playin’ witchoo, Dear Reader

Not only have I been working 70-hour weeks recently, most of those hours I've been working at a frantic pace. And you know what happens when you get little sleep and work too hard for too long? Mistakes will be made. Quality realizes its mortality and sacrifices itself to the gods of quantity. This is how I ended up in handcuffs yesterday.

The day started less-than-innocently when I made my first stop at the Naval Yard in Philly. Apparently trucks are supposed to enter to the left but I decided to go straight through the main gate. Two behemoth security guards started waving their hands and motioning to the left. I figured they meant I was to go through the left side of the main gate. Nope. If this was Iraq I would have been shot to smithereens, but even here in America I wonder if their guns wouldn't have been drawn if I hadn't understood their hand-waving in time. Hell, if it was my Naval Yard I wouldn't want scruffy-looking guys driving giant box trucks through the main gate either. But no, Dear Reader, that is not where I got handcuffed. The guards explained jovially (as only fat people can) where I was to go and I was on my way.

(As an aside I'd like to tell you that the Naval Yard is a beautiful place. It's a wide open space with warehouse-factory-office buildings that look as if they haven't been touched since the 60's. Reminds me of what the whole country will look like in a few decades… cause let's face it, nuclear bombs WILL be set off in major cities. It's important to remember that just because the current president says something, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily untrue. If he just said things randomly, he'd be right half the time. Am I right? You know when republicans wah-wah-wah about not being able to solve problems like education and poverty by "throwing money at them" I wonder why they don't apply that logic to military spending. (Actually I think I know why and it's not pretty, but I'll let you be the judge.) I mean, 90% of that Naval Yard is waste. Beautiful waste though.)

After my next stop something happened that I'd been silently dreading- I attempted to make a turn that was too sharp for the truck to handle. If you can imagine, I was nearly scraping my bumper on one car and my tail end on another. Traffic was getting backed up in two directions. So what did I do? It's a trucker's secret. I solved it, let's leave it at that.

I made a delivery to Sue's Produce, drove across the city to my next stop but realized I had another stop close to Sue's that I forgot… so I drove back, made that stop, and saw that I also forgot to deliver about six cases of yogurt to Sue's. My God quality, why have you forsaken me?

All of the setbacks were really starting to add up and I had to make it to my 15th stop by 3pm… but the faster I worked the more mistakes I made. I call it a vicious circle. What do you call it, a "vicious cycle?" I'll accept that.

I waited in about 10 minutes of traffic on a side-street until the traffic cop finally let everyone go. I pulled up outside of Sue's but as I went to the back of the truck to unload, the traffic cop began barking- "You can't park there! You have to move!" I'd been hassled here before and I felt like shit ever since. A traffic cop and two Philly construction brutes yelled at me for parking where I couldn't park- exactly in front of my destination! They hassled me into moving halfway down the block so that I had to unload an entire pallet by handcart. Not this time! I decided I wasn't going to take it- I'd be in and out.

I ignored her, opened the back of the truck and got the yogurt out. I figured the traffic cop wasn't going to come over- after all, she had traffic to direct. Well, she came over, and guess what- yep, you guessed it- she wasn't a traffic cop at all, but a real cop.

"Oh, I see, you gonna do whateva you want! Right?"

"I just had…"

"You gonna do whateva you want! You think I playin' witchoo?!"

"No, it's just…"

"Yeah, you think I playin' witchoo!"

"No, I really don't, I…"

"I tell you that you can't park here but you gonna do whateva you want."

"It was a mistake, I…"

I must have been delirious to think I could get away with it, and besides, I'm afraid of cops to begin with. I can't help it anymore than I can help being afraid of sharks. Cops are kind of like sharks if you think about it, they attack unexpectedly (but with red and blue flashing teeth.) They take away your freedom. They have dead eyes. They need to keep moving or they die.

"You just gonna do whateva you want."

"No…"

"Get out your license."

As I was getting it out she added, "Oh, you still think I playin' witchoo!" I had no idea how getting my license out constituted playing witchher.

She got out her handcuffs. "Turn around and put your hands behind you back." You know, I'll bet if you research the etymology of the phrase "playing with you", I'll bet you'll find it's sexual in nature.

"I really…"

"You still think I playin' witchoo??? You just gonna do whateva you want!"

I turned around. Click. Defenseless. My first time.

Unclick. She was teasing me.

"You wait right here."

I looked around. Some Philly construction brutes were getting a kick out of the whole thing. Get back to work assholes.

She got John, the owner, and asked him if he could take the yogurt from me. He did. I remembered back when I was a teacher, sometimes on performance reviews you'd get evaluated on your "professionalism." In the delivery profession, when a cop has to be the intermediary of a delivery, that's about as unprofessional as it gets.

She handed me my license and told me to have a nice day. I thought "Yeah, from this point it's looking up," but then I realized what she'd probably say to that, and "no, I not playin' witchoo," so I kept quiet. She went back to directing traffic. (What was the traffic doing in the meantime?) I got in the truck and pulled up to look in at John. I smiled and beated my heart Tug McGraw-style; John pretended like he was grabbing her and punching her in the face. We laughed and I drove off. What a profession!

I agree with John's pantomime in spirit, but I get where she was coming from- an 40-or so-year-old black lady, probably been pushed around her whole early life… she finally got to a position of power and people still don't listen to her. Everything she worked for dismissed. But what was up with the vague sexual allusions, the "you gonna do whateva you want," and the handcuffs? (Actually, I think I know why and it's not pretty, but I'll let you be the judge.)

Can I say I would have acted differently if I was in her position? This question captures the essence of my core philosophy- I would have done the same if I was in her position, because I would have been HER, in HER POSITION, and that's what SHE DID. Still, you have to try to be better than you are, and good should always try to conquer evil, so like I said, I agree with John in spirit… and I suppose in a strange way, that's why I should go into the ocean more often.

More stuff happened yesterday but it's all denouement from the handcuffs- I forgot a part of another order and had to go back, I had to go under a bridge with a 13'1" clearance and my truck is 13'1", after forgetting to secure my load I got to a stop and opened the back to find milk jugs splayed all over. Yep mistakes were made. But I made it to my 15th stop with 20 minutes to spare, and missed all of the philly traffic on the way home.

So looking back, great day- and no I'm not playin' witchoo.