Reflections on Man Alone, and Other Miscellany

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I was perfectly elated today to find out that Norm Macdonald has a new comedy special coming out in about 2 weeks. And I just heard one of his jokes today. It's not for all types! In fact, I'm not really sure it's a joke.

Norm, to Andy Dick, speaking rhetorically: "Let's say that you are straight, just completely straight. Can you imagine a scenario where you would enter a gay relationship and get your ass fucked every night for years just to put on appearances for the folks next door? I think that a guy who fucks asses has an easier time fucking a pussy, than the guy who generally fucks pussy, moving over to fucking a guy's hairy ass."

It's still hard to fathom that Norm is no longer with us, that he left us with only a small handful knowing he was sick. 

May 13, 2022

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Doris Day just died at 97 years old. If I could sum up my thoughts in three foreign words, what would they be? Probably- que sera sera.

May 13, 2017

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A UK tribunal ruled that calling a man "bald" is sexual harassment. It's like Larry David said- we're a group!

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Friday haiku club

Provided a needed respite

From email and thought

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Today would have been Bea Arthur's 100th birthday.

"I believe that you're here on Earth for a short time, and while you're here, you shouldn't forget it."

Here's Jeff Ross's story about her reaction to his iconic joke.

https://youtu.be/SzYrKrYbaSo

May 13, 2022

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Trump's satire profile:

Me: I am the president. I can’t commit crimes if I’m the president. 

Also me: Obama committed crimes when he was the president.

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Yesterday I interviewed a college student with a math minor. When I ran his driver history today I saw that we share a birthday, but 24 years removed. I pointed it out and he said, "Wow, what are the odds?" I told him that they were 1 in 365.25 and that I can't hire a math minor who doesn't understand basic statistics.

Nah, I'm full of crap. I didn't tell him I can't hire him... but I did tell him the odds!

May 13, 2020

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In the car this morning Zuzu asked if we were almost there. The problem was that we had a 7-hour drive ahead of us and we weren't yet out of the driveway.

May 13, 2018

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Michelle Obama: "Why don't you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you?... Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap... if somebody is doing that, they don't care about your kid."

Postscript, remember the quaint time when our the number one political problem that got the most news was the right complaining about Michelle Obama giving kids healthy food?

May 13, 2017

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So fun pulling gags on babies... I was playing peekaboo with Zuzu, but the third time she pulled the sheet away there was a cat face there instead of mine. She was STUNNED. You should have seen it... just a blank, baffled face, wondering how daddy turned into Razzles. This fun game had taken an absurd twist. Can't wait to see how interesting this stuff makes her.

Later...

This baby of mine just gave me about 10 face rakes and 5 beard pulls in about 1.5 seconds. I'm going to start calling her Zuzu Howard. (Also this beard has to go.)

May 13, 2016

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"What is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness." 

Damn, that's a great Don Draper quote!

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The journal Philosophy and Literature has an annual Bad Writing Contest. Try to read this sentence from the first winner, Judith Butler, a professor of rhetoric at Berkeley. (Must be real by the way, not parody.)

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."

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Three Terence Malick films coming out this year and another next year??? This is what I always thought heaven would be like.

May 13, 2013

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I'm shaking a stick at things not worth writing home about.

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Considering the future generations of his family, John Adams wrote this in a letter on this day in 1819:

“Although it is always a pleasure to be informed of the multiplication of my posterity, that pleasure is always attended with a degree of anxiety for their future fortunes. This anxiety however I constantly alleviate with a hope that they will all be good for something—good soldiers good sailors, good carpenters, good farmers, good tailors, good clothiers, good shoe-makers, good wood-cutters—or good some-thing-or-other. The world is wide enough for them all—let them labor and be virtuous.”

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Police bombed MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia on this day in 1985, killing six adults and five children, and destroying the homes of 250 city residents. 

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Bruce Chatwin, the subject of Werner Herzog's Nomad, began his perpetual pilgrimage on this day in 1940. From Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings, 1969-1989:

"Gradually the idea for a book began to take shape. It was to be a wildly ambitious and intolerant work, a kind of 'Anatomy of Restlessness' that would enlarge on Pascal's dictum about the man sitting quietly in a room. The argument, roughly, was as follows: that in becoming human, man had acquired, together with his straight legs and striding walk, a migratory 'drive' or instinct to walk long distances through the seasons; that this 'drive' was inseparable from his central nervous system; and, that, when warped in conditions of settlement, it found outlets in violence, greed, status-seeking or a mania for the new. This would explain why mobile societies such as the gypsies were egalitarian, thing-free and resistant to change; also why, to re-establish the harmony of the First State, all the great teachers - Buddha, Lao-tse, St Francis - had set the perpetual pilgrimage at the heart of their message and told their disciples, literally, to follow The Way."

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Magic Dick was born on this day in 1945. Wikipedia says that he is an American blues-rock harmonica, trumpet, and saxophone player. I never heard of him either. 

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Stephen Colbert was born on this day in 1964. A personal hero and a genius. One night I was dead drunk and told Emma that Stephen Colbert is the smartest guy I know. It can't be said enough, the courage to stand in front of the entire White House press corps and say things directly to the president, and to say them through jokes presented through an alter-ego, just an otherworldly performance. And then to be ridiculed by his performance after. People talk about Man Alone, but he was not alone. He said he was standing on the strength of his jokes that he and his team wrote. A perfect response.

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Japanese master swordsman, Sasaki Kojirō, was killed on this day in a battle with another swordmaster, Miyamoto Musashi. Where was he? Nobody sure if he was real or fiction. Does it matter? Catholics need to be very careful how they answer.

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Gary Cooper died on this day in 1961 at the age of 59. Kane from High Noon, the quintessential Man Alone.

Kane: I sent a man up five years ago for murder. He was supposed to hang. But up North, they commuted it to life and now he's free. I don't know how. Anyway, it looks like he's coming back.

Amy: I still don't understand.

Kane: He was always wild and kind of crazy. He'll probably make trouble.

Amy: But that's no concern of yours, not anymore.

Kane: I'm the one who sent him up.

Amy: Well, that was part of your job. That's finished now. They've got a new marshal.

Kane: He won't be here until tomorrow. Seems to me I've got to stay. Anyway, I'm the same man with or without this.

Amy: Oh, that isn't so.

Kane: I expect he'll come lookin' for me. Three of his old bunch are waiting at the depot.

Amy: That's exactly why we ought to go.

Kane: They'll just come after us, four of 'em, and we'd be all alone on the prairie.

Amy: We've got an hour.

Kane: What's an hour?...What's a hundred miles? We'd never be able to keep that store, Amy. They'd come after us and we'd have to run again, as long as we live.

Amy: No we wouldn't, not if they didn't know where to find us. Oh Will! Will, I'm begging you, please let's go.

Kane: I can't.

Amy: Don't try to be a hero. You don't have to be a hero, not for me.

Kane: I'm not trying to be a hero. If you think I like this, you're crazy.

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The Planetarium Lecturer, from Rebel Without a Cause: 

"The universe will be little moved by our demise. We will disappear, destroyed as we began in a burst of gas and fire. In all the immensity of the gallaxy and beyond the earth will not be missed. The problems of man seem trivial and naive indeed, and man, existing alone, seems himself a thing of little consequence."

Plato- "What does he know about man alone?"

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Errol The Umbrella Man at Dealey Plaza

https://youtu.be/iuoZWb9gqv0

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The Onion- Animal Facing Extinction In 2003 Fucks Its Way Back

Finally, some good news.

http://onion.com/YRSklS

May 13, 2013

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Huffington Post- 'Mad Men' Review: Everyone's Out Of Place In 'The Runaways'

Great recap! Excited to re-watch it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/12/mad-men-runaways_n_5307674.html

May 13, 2014

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Fearsome foursome- Dracula, Freddy, Darth Vader, Jason

http://49.media.tumblr.com/760f65b27e2d33c2b5a9ec3bbe1060e0/tumblr_nxrh14MH9F1rm97r4o1_400.gif

May 13, 2016

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Science- Watch these ticklish rats laugh and jump for joy

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/watch-these-ticklish-rats-laugh-and-jump-joy

May 13, 2017

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Cisco Houston- The Cat Came Back

https://youtu.be/gmRA9k55dNg

Bazo's back! She was gone 4 months this time, a new record. The local rodent population is celebrating, I'm sure.

May 13, 2018

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Open Culture- Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

I don't believe I know one person who wouldn't prefer to live in a world guided by Moses's commandments over those of Hitchens. (Except maybe his last one, but doesn't the last one follow?)

I: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color.

II: Do not ever use people as private property.

III: Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.

IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.

V: Do not condemn people for their inborn nature.

VI: Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly.

VII: Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.

VIII: Turn off that fucking cell phone.

IX: Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions.

X: Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/christopher-hitchens-revises-the-10-commandments-for-the-21st-century.html

May 13, 2020

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McSweeney's- SURE, THE VELOCIRAPTORS ARE STILL ON THE LOOSE, BUT THAT’S NO REASON NOT TO REOPEN JURASSIC PARK

by CARLOS GREAVES

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sure-the-velociraptors-are-still-on-the-loose-but-thats-no-reason-not-to-reopen-jurassic-park

May 13, 2020

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Hitchens- "People always demand respect for their faith. You've noticed this happening. Why should I respect someone who makes enormous claims on no evidence, and when confronted with that fact, say, "Well, I don't need any evidence, I've got faith."? I think that extraordinary claims, such as that they know, not just that there is a god, but that they know his mind, they know his instructions, they've had revealed truth from him: a claim like that demands extraordinary evidence. Instead of which, they say, "No, how about no evidence at all, and just take me on faith?" Why am I suppose to respect that? I don't respect it. I suspect it."

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Joseph Campbell- "Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone who denies this, anyone who holds back, is out of order. Death is an act of giving."

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Stephen Batchelor, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist- “Mindfulness accepts as its focus of inquiry whatever arises in one’s field of awareness, no matter how disturbing or painful it might be. One neither seeks nor expects to find some greater truth lurking behind the veil of appearances. What appears and how you respond to it: that alone is what matters.”

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Hume- "Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness."

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Einstein- "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

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Henry David Thoreau, Walden- "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays- "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."