Spirits Among Us, and Other Miscellany

On the positive side, perhaps the most restrictive abortion law, and the Supreme Court siding with it, will will lead to an amendment making the decision between the woman and her doctor once and fall all. The Supreme Court's hands would be tied and there would never come a time that 75% of the states would overturn the amendment. On the negative side... all the awful things that happen in the meantime.

May 16, 2019

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Kenji Mizoguchi was born on this day in 1898. From Ugetsu: 

"Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others. Men are created equal. Everyone is entitled to their happiness."

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The worst thing about this new Alabama anti-abortion law is obviously, more Alabamans.

May 16, 2019

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Meme:

A Native American saying, "So you're telling me you believe Hebrews are entitled to the land of Israel because their ancestors once lived there?"

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Apparently 12% of those who voted for the president now support impeaching him, and with this Comey memo outlining the president attempting to obstruct justice, Senator King says impeachment is on the table. 

I hope so! Think back to Chris Matthews' interview with the president before he was elected... he refused to take dropping a nuclear bomb on Europe off the table. So just desserts.

May 16, 2017

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Emma posted this, on this day in 2015:

I don't care which of your friends liked which muppets and for what reasons. I prefer silence. ~ Ben Kreider

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Jim Henson died on this day in 1992.

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Trying to read the Mad Men tea leaves: Peggy and Stan visit Ginsburg, and it's somehow a catalyst for them getting together. Ghost of Lane? Dare to dream, return of Sal and a reconciliation... symbol of Don's growth, changing with the times. Peggy comes up with the "buy the world a coke" commercial then realizes she's risen to the top, there's nowhere left to go, and advertising is unsatisfying. Advertising is the lie, creating want...like somehow those beatnik guys realized in the first season...leaving advertising equals gaining the truth, i.e. a satisfying life. The falling man in the credits symbolizes the fall from the advertising heavens. The inspiration for the episode (and the series?) is the Bob Dylan lyrics, "when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Joan starts her own company, picks up big accounts from McCann, Pete comes on board. It ends modern day, maybe at Roger's funeral. They read his eulogy, which he wrote, with some real zingers. Cosgrove wrote a book about the advertising world. A reconciliation between Betty and Don, in a sense, if you know what I mean. Does Don find love, or himself, or the waitress, or New York again, or Jesus, or any sort of satisfaction...or an identity? Still stewing on all that...

May 16, 2015

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I'll be god-damned if a that's-what-she-said joke didn't just bring tears to my eyes.

May 16, 2013

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Bukowski- "The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubt and stupid ones are full of confidence." 

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Explain this to me: An alcoholic cross-dresser was in a coma for nine days, and when he came out of it he had amnesia. He was no longer an alcoholic, but he was still a cross-dresser. I'll bet I'll still be trying to figure that one out when I'm eighty.

May 16, 2011

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MOVIE SUGGESTION

Just watched Marwencol- a documentary about a guy beaten up outside a bar who lives a metaphoric life in a town for dolls he created in his backyard. Thoroughly captivating!

May 16, 2011

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My favorite hypothetical movie- a 10-hour montage of all my favorite montages.

May 16, 2011

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My new favorite mushroom is... the royal trumpet. Doot do-do-doooo.

May 16, 2009

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The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed on this day, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. Imagine! Just over 100 years ago, we've come so far. It was repealed less than two years later.

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Paper Moon was released on this day in 1973

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On this day in 1972, Greg Luzinski hit a 500ft home run off the Liberty Bell in Veterans Stadium.

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Henry Fonda was born on this day in 1905. He is the star of my favorite film, My Darling Clementine.

Wyatt Earp: "1864, 1882. 18 years. You didn't get much of a chance did you James? I wrote to Pa and Cory Sue. They're gonna be all busted up over it. Cory Sue's young, but Pa. I guess he'll never get over it. I'll be comin' out to see you regular James. So will Morg and Virg. I'm gonna be around here for a while. Can't tell. Maybe when we leave this country young kids like you will be able to grow up and live safe."

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Voice for the common man, Studs Terkel, was born on this day in 1912.

I think about an old Daily Show interview with him all the time. Studs nails a primary, but often over-looked, tenet we have in this country. I think about it every morning I wake up and see that the president said something idiotic. We can tell the president to bugger off! In my opinion, an excellent right to take advantage of. 

Studs: We were raised by argument. Tom Paine wrote Common Sense, where commoners could tell royalty to bugger off. We have a president, so-called, and the fact is we can tell the president, to bugger off! By the way, that's being American!

He died not long after, but his spirit lives within me.

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Comedian Andy Kaufman left us on this day in 1984, or at least a lot of people think he did. His sister believes that his spirit slipped into Jim Carrey. I'm not even going to look up any jokes, I don't think any of them would work in print. Perhaps his greatest joke of all was simply reading the entire Great Gatsby to an unsuspecting crowd, lasting deep into the night.

The Great Gatsby- "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

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Liberace was born on this day in 1919. I'm not going to repeat Norm MacDonald's joke about him. 

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Rancor Keeper, Danny Trejo, was born on this day in 1944.

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Joseph Strauss left us on this day in 1938. He co-designed The Golden Gate Bridge and never could have conceived of how many people would go on the jump off it to their deaths, more than 1800. Tragic. What is it about that bridge? Some survived and changed their lives around. One guy was rescued by seals. Eleven people died during its construction.

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Race car driver Dick Trickle died on this day in 2013. It's too bad that there isn't any other nicknames for Richard. 

"Let's name him after a diseased cock." -his parents, presumably

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Novelist and screenwriter, James Agee, left us on this day in 1955 at the age of 45. He wrote Night of the Hunter, and The African Queen. This passage from A Death In the Family captures the exact melancholy-yet-pleasant feeling of me driving through New Holland with my kids. 

"How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for?

"Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it's almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.

"And God knows he was lucky, so many ways, and God knows he was thankful. Everything was good and better than he could have hoped for, better than he ever deserved; only, whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn't what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart."

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Other notable deathdays- Eliot Ness (1957), Margaret Hamilton (1985), Sammy Davis Jr. (1990), I. M. Pei (2019)

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Norm MacDonald- "Horses must love that they're the go-to animal if you want to say that a guy has a huge cock. I bet giraffes have huge cocks, I'm sure of it. But let's face it, no one's ever going to say, "That guy is hung like a giraffe." Unless his cock is yellow and has brown spots on it. In which case, who cares how fucking big his cock is, he only has weeks to live."

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I saw someone reminding everyone to vote tomorrow, and to pray beforehand. But this person also refuses to believe that Biden won, because God told her through prayer that He anointed Trump. All the God-sponsored Republican votes were legit and the others weren't apparently, even when they were on the same ballot.

So if God just anoints the winner, and it's impossible that the other guy legitimately won, why bother voting at all? Just to prove what is already known? 

Maybe we should abandon our system and just take a poll of the people who think God told them the winner. Yeah, no way that will lead to violence. 

People who believe it's impossible that the other person could have won, from either side, they are very dangerous people.

May 16, 2021

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Aw, adorable! At the park I just found one of those cute little painted rocks people leave around, next to like 50 people playing basketball maskless. This one says "FAITH OVER FEAR," with a little cross. Maybe I'll take it seriously and drive home blindfolded.

May 16, 2020

Postscript- I think that little cross made me a little cross.

Pic in addendum.

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Reflecting on a Shit Garden

We often forget that the word "horrible," is derived from the word, "horror." This is simply a horrible story, and I apologize in advance.

Sloth plans to one day make a "shit garden"- a patch outside where he either shits or puts his shit (as if that distinction matters) with the intent of seeing what seeds grow and what he can harvest. Yes, Dear Reader, horrible! Good luck forgetting about it. Good luck not puking the next time he offers you something he “baked.” I guarantee that whatever it is will be terrible, and will remind you of the word from which “terrible” is derived. Good luck not thinking where those ingredients were “derived.”

Yesterday at work he was on the phone with Whole Foods and I got to reflecting. Whole Foods… hmm… Whole Foods… aha, “Hey Sloth you should open up a store where you sell your shit garden items and call it A-hole Foods.” 

I couldn’t stop laughing. Yes, I was very proud of myself. I still am. This is a guy who eats nothing but organic, and is going to go outside and shit in his garden to see what grows... "A-hole Foods"... the joke writes itself.

My officemates were less than impressed though. There were even a few groans. Groans, Dear Reader! Groans for what must have been the cleverest thing they heard that day.

So I humbly submit it for your consideration.

May 16, 2009

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Tim Urban, Wait But Why

Q: If you had power to dictate what should be taught in schools—things that everyone had to master before they get to enter adulthood—what would you add to the curriculum? – Audrey T. (Toronto, Canada)

A: General (should be part of many classes):

Independent, first-principles thinking

How to argue and debate productively

How to be an effective learner

Intellectual humility

Independent problem-solving skills, through practice

Subject-specific:

Basic math

Basic science, and more importantly, a lot of practice with the scientific method

Basic civics

Basic money management

Enough writing and speaking skills to be an effective communicator

Enough history to understand why fundamental liberal rights were invented and how precious they are

Older students should be able to go deeper in the areas they feel most drawn to or, if resources allow, take electives where they can learn a more specific skill

Indoctrination in the teacher’s particular political ideology

Oh wait definitely not that last one.

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By the time you're 18, you've spent 97% of your time with your parents that you will ever spend with them.

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Cracked- Four irrational fears that aren't as irrational as they seem

Sharks, bugs, serial killers, bridges.

"People win the lottery all the goddamned time."

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-irrational-fears-that-arent-as-irrational-as-they-seem/

May 16, 2014

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http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/final-thoughts-on-chomsky

"Apart from violence or other types of coercion, conversation is all we have with which to influence each other."

May 16, 2015

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Norm telling a Dave Letterman joke: “I was on the street the other day and I saw a garbage truck, and on the back of the garbage truck there was a small sign that said, ‘Please do not follow too closely.’ Another of life’s simple pleasures ruined by meddling bureaucracy, ladies and gentleman. Remember the old days, when dad would pile the kids in a station wagon and we’d all go and follow a garbage truck.”

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/16/norm-macdonald-david-letterman-tribute

May 16, 2015

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McSweeney's- ALTERNATE-UNIVERSE WASHINGTON REACTS TO REPORTS THAT PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON LEAKED HIGHLY CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE TO RUSSIAN OFFICIALS

by ERIC MARCH

Not the ending I was expecting!

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternate-universe-washington-reacts-to-reports-that-president-hillary-clinton-leaked-highly-classified-intelligence-to-russian-officials

May 16, 2017

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Ben Franklin's Daily Schedule

Keep it simple, go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, spend quiet time alone, set your intention and plan for the day, dedicate time to learning, create time blocks for deep and shallow work, put things back in order after work, schedule downtime, reflect on your day in the evenings, don’t aim for perfection.

https://www.businessinsider.com/benjamin-franklins-daily-schedule-productivity-2019-4

May 16, 2019

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The Hill- Trump shares video of protesters confronting reporter: ‘FAKE NEWS IS NOT ESSENTIAL’

So the president piles on a journalist simply covering a protest... a journalist actually giving a voice to the protesters. He's a villian of all-time, a vacuous shell of a person, little more than a collection of knee-jerk reactions to stimuli.

Politico's Tim Albert- “It’s discouraging enough to watch the tape of these knuckledraggers harassing a reporter who’s just doing his job by covering their protest (and who produced an even-handed segment for his local newscast), but to see the President pile on, bullying a civilian... it’s nauseating.”

Jake Tapper- "87,000 Americans dead, 1.3 million infected, and the president is attacking a local TV news reporter who was trying to do his job and cover a protest. Indecent, vile."

The New York Times Maggie Haberman- "Good thing the president is trying to calm down the misplaced ang-.“

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/498109-trump-shares-video-of-protesters-confronting-reporter-fake-news-is-not

May 16, 2020

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Edward Hopper- "Maybe I am not very human - all I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

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Hume- "When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities."

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Einstein- "A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson- "In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him."

That has crossed my mind a thousand times since first hearing it in high school.

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Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers- "I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day."

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Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self- “Evolution simply happened—foresightless, by chance, without goal. There is nobody to despise or rebel against—not even ourselves. And this is not some bizarre form of neurophilosophical nihilism but rather a point of intellectual honesty and great spiritual depth.”

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James Agee again, from A Death in the Family- "Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off of pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and you can too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice--except to go to pieces. . . It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.