Some Pieces of the Little Script That Has Me Trapped

Want to know The Secret of the Universe?

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy:

“What seems like sudden insight may be misleading, and must be tested soberly when the divine intoxication has passed. American philosopher William James describes the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written.

It was: “A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.“

...

Stonewall Jackson was a perfect name for a Confederate Civil War general in 1861. Times change though, and in 2022 it would be the perfect name for the gayest person alive. Either Stonewall Jackson or Rainbow Jones. Strangely, Rainbow Jones would have been the exact worst possible name for a Confederate Civil War general. Either side actually, Confederate or Union. That might be the one thing that they could agreed on, that Rainbow Jones has no place in the Civil War. In Civil War II though, I want Rainbow Jones defending the flag. Both flags.

...

Morty, from Rick and Morty- “On one of our adventures, Rick and I basically destroyed the whole world, so we bailed on that reality and we came to this one because in this one, the world wasn't destroyed and in this one, we were dead. So we came here, a- a- and we buried ourselves and we took their place. And every morning, Summer, I eat breakfast twenty yards away from my own rotting corpse.”

...

Thought experiment from Robert Nozick's book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia:

Imagine that super neuroscientists have created a machine that can simulate pleasurable experiences for the rest of your life. The simulation is ultra-realistic and indistinguishable from reality. There are no adverse side effects, and specific pleasurable experiences can even be programmed into the simulation. Regarding pleasure experienced, the machine offers more than is possible in several lifetimes. Do we have any reason to not go in?equence.

...

The last witchcraft trial held in the United States begins in Salem, Massachusetts on this day in 1878. Lucretia Brown was an adherent of Christian Science and accused Daniel Spofford of attempting to harm her through his mental powers. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and this only happened like 150 years ago!

...

Like the Bible says though. "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." Exodus 22:18

Wait, that's shit advice. DO NOT KILL ANY WITCHES! IT'S MORE LIKELY THAT YOU ARE WRONG, THEY ARE INNOCENT PEOPLE, AND YOU WILL BE A MURDERER! 

Throw that book where you got that advice into the garbage!

...

Tom Wolfe left us on this day in 2018.

"A cult is a religion with no political power."

...

In 1961 a white mob attacked a Freedom Riders bus twice near Anniston, Alabama, before fire-bombing the bus and attacking the civil rights protesters who flee the burning vehicle. 

Those are the grandparents of all these southern idiots we have now who believe in freedom through authoritarianism.

...

Danish astronomer Peder Horrebow was born on this day in 1679. There's a crater on the moon named after him.

...

Bobby Darin was born on this day in 1936. Dream Lover is one of my very favorites, a song of the highest echelon, otherworldly. He said:

"It isn't true that you live only once. You only die once. You live lots of times, if you know how."

But he also said, "My whole life has been a lie," so now I don't know what the hell to believe.

...

George Lucas was born on this day in 1944. Who would I be if there was never a George Lucas? I have absolutely no idea. Three powerhouse quotes to celebrate him:

"Scholars who have studied myth and religion for many years and have connected all of the theories spawned over the ages about life and consciousness and who have taken away the superficial trappings, have come up with the same sensibility. They call it different things. They try to personify it and deal with it in different ways. But everybody seems to dress down the fact that life cannot be explained. The only reason for life is life. There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason. One might think of life as a large organism, and we are but a small symbiotic part of it."

"When I was eighteen I was in an automobile accident and went through a near-death experience. I was actually taken away from the scene, presumed dead, and it wasn’t until I reached the hospital that the doctors revived my heartbeat and brought me back to life. This is the kind of experience that molds people’s beliefs. But I have found that most of my conclusions have evolved from observing life since that time. If I’ve come to know anything, it’s that these questions are as unknowable for us as they would be for a tree or for an ant."

"It is possible that on a spiritual level we are all connected in a way that continues beyond the comings and goings of various life forms. My best guess is that we share a collective spirit or life force or consciousness that encompasses and goes beyond individual life forms. There’s a part of us that connects to other humans, connects to other animals, connects to plants, connects to the planet, connects to the universe. I don’t think we can understand it through any kind of verbal, written or intellectual means. But I do believe that we all know this, even if it is on a level beyond our normal conscious thoughts.

If we have a meaningful place in this process, it is to try to fit into a healthy, symbiotic relationship with other life force. Everybody, ultimately, is trying to reach a harmony with the other parts of the life force. And in trying to figure out what life is all about, we ultimately come down to expressions of compassion and love, helping the rest of the life force, caring about others without any conditions or expectations, without expecting to get anything in return. This is expressed in every religion, by every prophet."

...

On this day in 1989, the final episode of Family Ties. I have such a strong feeling of melancholy when thinking about my favorite shows coming to an end. I have a really hard time accepting the ends of things in general.

...

Coffee and Cigarettes was released on this day in 2004.

...

George Brett was born on this day in 1953. 

"If I stay healthy, I have a chance to collect 3,000 hits and 1,000 errors."

He ended his career with 3,154 hits and 292 errors.

...

Sofia Coppola was born on this day in 1971. 

The Godfather and Apocalypse Now are without question two of the greatest films in the history of filmmaking, but on any given night I'd likely prefer to watch The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. Does that mean I prefer Sofia Coppola to her father? Rumble Fish vs. Marie Antoinette though? Rumble Fish is 1000x better, but maybe the Marie Antoinette trailer is better than Rumble Fish??? I think I've watched it 1000 times, ironically one time for each time better that Rumble Fish is.

The Outsiders could break the tie... expect Sofia pops up in a small but great moment.

Little Girl : Do you have 15 cents?

Dallas : I don't have any money.

Little Girl : Do you have a dime?

Dallas : Go away. We're busy here.

Little Girl : Do you...?

Dallas : [Annoyed by now] Go away! Get out of here!

Dallas : [When she is gone] That was a close call.

Her favorite films are listed in the addendum. 

...

Phillies legend Roy Halladay was born on this day in 1977. He threw a no-hitter in the postseason and a perfect game in the same year. Fearsome. Powerful. A real baseball player.

...

Activist Emma Goldman left us on this day in 1940. Today the abortion debate is raging, ridiculous to think that only 100 years ago she was put in jail for lecturing about birth control. 

...

Frank Sinatra died on this day in 1998. He set up one of the greatest jokes ever. Apparently once at some fancy restaurant he flew into a rage and threw a ketchup bottle against the wall. The restaurant went silent. Don Rickles said, "Hey Frank, can ya pass the ketchup?"

...

B.B. King left us on this day in 2015. Bluesman through and through:

"Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin', too."

...

Grumpy Cat left us on this day in 2019.

...

Other notable birthdays- Daphne du Maurier (1907), Jim Jones (1931), Harvey Keitel (1939), Ritchie Valens (1941), Mary Wells (1943), Stevie Wonder (1950), John Kasich (1952), Dennis Rodman (1961)

...

Other notable deathdays- Bob Wills (1975), Doris Day (2019)

...

Tom Wolfe again, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:

"Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script."

...

In a dream last night I was following some sort of evil cat through a haunted house. Within the dream I wondered what the cat symbolized. The cat looked at me and said slowly, in a man's voice- "responsibility." I thought, "huh, it's rare that you get such a clear answer to a question like that."

May 14, 2011

...

Wouldn't it be nice if a person's chosen level of risk would be proportional to their chances of dying or being debilitated by covid-19? 

It would sort out the problem. We have people who want to live risky lives, which would be fine, except that they threaten those who want to be safe. 

We have a long-standing legal principle of one person's right to wave their arms around ending at the beginning of someone else's nose. This isn't quite so simple though, it's a complicated issue.

If someone wants to accept, let's say, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying from a trip to get a Wendy's Frosty, great! What happens though if they unknowingly give their disease to the cashier? What do they put on the death certificates- covid-19 for the cashier, and on the other one, freedom?

May 14, 2020

...

Gamblers are more impulsive and "see" more illusory patterns where there are none, a new study finds. 

...

...

One good quotation is worth all the average books.

...

Public Service Announcement: There's a tremendous deal on Zagnuts at Sharp Shopper.

Postscript, never forget it, all the best candy bars are at the end of the alphabet. They saved the best for last.

May 14, 2013

...

Halfway through running errands today I realized I had a sock fastened to the velcro of my back pocket, hanging down like a tail.

May 14, 2012

...

For breakfast I sauteed up some watercress, onions and garlic. The I cracked some eggs in it, and added cheese, and then ham. And I made some bacon too. I'll call it A Vegan Meal of Dorian Gray. 

May 14, 2011

...

The logic behind Kevin and Sloth butchering the groundhog is sound: since Hugo killed the groundhog, that's all he gets to eat until it's gone.

May 14, 2011

...

Yesterday while Sloth was driving, with me in the passenger seat, he spotted a golfer bring his club up to hit a ball. He said "watch this" and blew his horn just as the club was coming down. The golfer completely missed the ball and shook his fist at us. And you thought there was no magic left in the world.

May 14, 2011

...

...

Since we say "I'm in the clear" when danger subsides, from now on when danger arises I'm going to say, "I'm out of the clear!"

...

Schopenhauer's mother, damn!

...

Big Think news article today:

Nano diamond batteries could last thousands of years. Utilizing nuclear waste converted to diamonds, this company's batteries will reportedly last thousands of years in some cases.anger

The future sure is going to be awesome if we can make it there.

...

Blondie- In the Flesh

https://youtu.be/kmONePejIIA

Darling, darling, darling...

May 14, 2010

...

Existential Star Wars

https://youtu.be/Q-uQWNd540I

"Nothingness, I embrace you."

May 14, 2011

...

Bukowski- So You Want to Be a Writer

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16549

May 14, 2011

...

The Marginalian- How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

Want to win an argument with me? Here's how. (But be careful, I'll be pulling the same tricks on you.)

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism/

May 14, 2014

...

TED- The 4 stories we tell ourselves about death

Perhaps the bet TED talk I've seen. Every sentence is quote-worthy. "The four narratives — common across civilizations — that we tell ourselves in order to help us manage the terror of death- elixir, resurrection, soul, legacy."

http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_cave_the_4_stories_we_tell_ourselves_about_death

May 14, 2014

Postscript- Legacy, that's the reason I'm doing this blog. After I'm gone, there will be something left that explained something about who I was, and what I found interesting and important.

...

Slate- The Founding Mothers

An ode to my matriarchs, every last one.

By David Eagleman

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/05/the_founding_mothers.html

May 14, 2017

...

The New York Times Editorial Board- The Republican’s Guide to Presidential Behavior

Yes, very good list to keep handy for the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-republicans-guide-to-presidential-behavior.html

May 14, 2017

...

Washington Post- Trump thinks that exercising too much uses up the body’s ‘finite’ energy

Ladies and gentlemen, the leader the free world. If he believes garbage like this, imagine how many important things he gets wrong... like his call for a new nuclear arms race, for one example.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-thinks-that-exercising-too-much-uses-up-the-bodys-finite-energy/2017/05/12/bb0b9bda-365d-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html

May 14, 2017

...

Alternet- White House AIDS bewildered an alarmed, Trump seems lost and paranoid

I've thought this before and I've been wrong, but I now think it again... two weeks something big will happen. This chaos is unsustainable. Mass Republican exodus, release of something big that someone's been sitting on, war? President's can always turn bad numbers around with war. From the article:

“White House aides have felt bewildered and alarmed by how Trump arrives at his decisions — often on impulse and emotion and sometimes by rejecting the counsel of those around him — and how he then communicates those decisions to his personnel and the public,” the Post said. “Trump is in some ways like a pilot opting to fly a plane through heavy turbulence then blaming the flight attendants when the passengers get jittery.”

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/white-house-aides-bewildered-and-alarmed-trump-seems-lost-some-kind-paranoid-delusion#.WRj5rNFvbp0.facebook

May 14, 2017

...

Taste of Cinema- The 25 Best Movie Scenes Of The 2010s (So Far)

I'm putting all of these on my list... only saw a handful but that was a worldclass handful. (Except that dust storm scene from Road Warrior...perhaps mentioned for the theater.)

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/the-25-best-movie-scenes-of-the-2010s-so-far/

May 14, 2017

...

The Atlantic- I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough

Caitlin Flanagan is such a great writer, an original voice. Wishing her many more years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/surviving-cancer-coronavirus-pandemic/610594/

May 14, 2020

...

Meme: "God tells us to forgive everyone. Holds 4000 year grudge for children eating fruit from the wrong tree."

...

Tim Urban- Wait But Why

Q- When parking, if both options are available, do you pull into the spot or back in? – Brighid D. (Manchester, NH)

A- Pulling in forward is Present You living their best life and treating Future You like their assistant. Backing in is Present You acting like Future You’s assistant. Pulling forward out of a spot you previously backed into is a highly luxurious experience, but as a procrastinator type whose jam it is to fuck over Future Tim, a rare one for me.

.

I look for the nearest pull through spot and walk 50 extra feet. 

...

I laugh every time I hear somebody refer to someone's head as a coconut.

...

...

Einstein- "Time is an illusion."

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays- "Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for."

...

Hume- "The truth springs from arguments amongst friends."

...

Edward Albee- "I think we should all live on the precipe of life, as fully and as dangerously as possible. Everyone should make the assumption that they're going through life only once. Tomorrow we die. Why not take chances, extend yourself? How awful it is when a person comes to the end of life full of regret."

Great way to get killed!

...

Bruce M. Hood, The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs- “Supernatural thinking is simply the natural consequence of failing to match our intuitions with the true reality of the world.”

...

Henry David Thoreau, Walden- "I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."

That has long been a guiding principle for me, and the worst mistake of my life was when I violated it by becoming a teacher.

...

Wolfe once again, from Bonfire of the Vanities: "Bullshit reigns."

Addendum

Part 1

“A Smile to Remember” by Charles Bukowski

we had the goldfish and they went around and around

in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes

across our front picture window and

my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to

appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry,"

and she was right: it's better to be happy if you

can be

but my father beat her two or three times a week while

raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't

defeat what was attacking him.

my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish,

wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a

week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!

why don't you smile?

and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the

saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and

hell and hell and hell, and nothing else

one day all the goldfish died, all five of them,

they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the

eye on each top side still open,

and when my father got home he threw them to the cat

there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother

smiled

Part 2

Sofia Coppola’s favourite films:

• A Brief Encounter – David Lean, 1945

• Gilda – Charles Vidor, 1946

• A Place In The Sun – George Stevens, 1951

• Breathless – Jean-Luc Godard, 1960

• La Notte – Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961

• Lolita – Stanley Kubrick, 1962

• The Servant – Joseph Losey, 1963

• Darling – John Schlesinger, 1965

• The Last Picture Show – Peter Bogdanovich, 1971

• Heartbreak Kid – Elaine May, 1972

• Badlands – Terrence Malick, 1973

• Fear of Fear – Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975

• Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels – Chantal Akerman, 1975

• Bugsy Malone – Alan Parker, 1976

• All That Jazz – Bob Fosse, 1979

• Tootsie – Sydney Pollack, 1982

• Rumble Fish – Francis Ford Coppola, 1983

• The Thorn Birds – Daryl Duke, 1983

• Sixteen Candles – John Hughes, 1984

• Stranger Than Paradise – Jim Jarmusch, 1984

• Do The Right Thing – Spike Lee, 1989

• Goodfellas – Martin Scorsese, 1990

• The Piano – Jane Campion, 1993

• Safe – Todd Haynes, 1995

• To Die For – Gus Van Sant, 1995

• In The Mood For Love – Wong Kar-wai, 2000

• Together – Lukas Moodysson, 2000

• Chris Rock: Never Scared – Joel Gallen, 2004

• Head-On – Fatih Akın, 2004

• The Incredibles – Brad Bird, 2004

• Grizzly Man – Werner Herzog, 2005

• The Savages – Tamara Jenkins, 2007

• Let The Right One In – Tomas Alfredson, 2008

• The White Ribbon – Michael Haneke, 2009

• Ida – Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013

• Under the Skin – Jonathan Glazer, 2013

• Ex Machina – Alex Garland, 2014

• Force Majeure – Ruben Östlund, 2014

• Daddy’s Home – Sean Anders, 2015

• Bombshell – Jay Roach, 2019

• Uncut Gems – Safdie Brothers, 2019

What a knockout list! Makes me happy just to read it.