The Landscapes of Our Own Souls, and Other Miscellany

I lost my earbuds, so tonight I had to run with the company of my own thoughts. I enjoy listening to podcasts when I run, and without one, I found myself staring off into the distance, and eager to get there. 

When I've had boring jobs in the past, I developed the habit of running through old conversations and thinking of better things I could have said.

For the highbrow among you, this is referred to as an esprit d'escalier, or "staircase wit." You think of something quite literally as you're going down the staircase after you left the situation. I've been descending different staircases for decades.

For the lowbrow among you, you probably know this as a Jerk Store scenario. (Be careful with a spiteful esprit d'escalier, or you might become the Jerk Store's all-time best seller.)

As I ran, I started thinking about a recent conversation I had with somebody about running, I forget who it was. They said that they prefer bike riding because the landscape changes more quickly. 

Prince popped into my mind. It was recently the anniversary of his death and I had looked up a list of his quotes. Julia Stiles recounted the time that she was at a party with some other moviestar friends and Prince was there. Matt Damon started making small talk with him. "So, you're from Minnesota?"

Apparently not much for small talk, Prince said, "I live within my own heart, Matt Damon."

Then it hit me, the debate about running vs biking could have been settled this way:

"No matter the method, we all travel within the landscape of our own souls." Thanks for the nugget Prince.

Yep, we don't really go anywhere do we? We're always within ourselves. Now I just have to wait for that exact same situation to turn up to try out my material. Might be a while. 

It was a good run within my own mind.

May 5, 2022

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In a perfect of example of literature remaining lively and surprising, Kurt Vonnegut said of it, “Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.” And now that I think about it, maybe it's ironic that Vonnegut is the only author I know of to have a hand drawn picture of an asshole right there in a break in the text, in Breakfast of Champions. 

I think this notion has something to do with why Mark Twain said that he wishes he could dig up Jane Austen and hit her over the skull with her own shinbone. What percentage of literature should just disappear forever?

May 5, 2021

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I know one piece of literature that should remain forever:

I sat by the Duchess at tea,

And she asked, "Do you fart when you pee?"

I said with some wit, 

"Do you belt when you shit?"

And felt it was one up for me.

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Napoleon died in exile on this day in 1821, on the island of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean. I don't know how these two are related but 45 years later, Memorial Day first celebrated in United States at Waterloo, New York.

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On this day in 1945, a Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army kills six people near Bly, Oregon. It had traveled the Gulf stream from Japan. A monument was set up, and to this day Japanese civilians visit the site to offer their apologies and pay their respects.

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On this day in 1877, Sitting Bull lead his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson.

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Cy Young of the Boston Americans threw the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball on this day in 1904.

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Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight, on this day in 1961. 

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude was first published on this day in 1967. It's opening line:

''Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.'' 

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Jerzy Dudek had one hell of a game as goalie on this day in 2005, as explained in John Green's Anthropocene Reviewed.

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Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, was born on this day in 1813. "What labels me, negates me." Okay, maybe he wasn't a philosopher!

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Blind Willie McTell joined us on this day in 1898. 

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Kurt Loder's birthday today in 1945, or as I call it, Face Your Mortality Day. How could Kurt Loder be 77 years old???

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Adele was born on this day in 1988. I believe she will be known for hundreds of years.

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Tammy Wynette was born on this day in 1942. Famous for singing Stand By Your Man, she was divorced five times. Of course she was also famous for D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

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I've been playing racquetball with some other fully vaccinated people and I'm using a bunch of muscles I haven't used for over a year. Guess which one I pulled? Wrong, the sartorius. I had to look up a video to find out how to stretch it.

May 5, 2021

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It crossed my mind that I distinctly remember the first time I got together with a group of friends without communicating verbally. We emailed back and forth and all met up at the same place at the same time. It was like magic.

There was a time before email when I moved to New Mexico to student teach and two friends were going to visit... but the problem was that I was only going to find an apartment once I got there, and they would be en route before then. We created a code, and I told them I'd write my address in the second stall of the local McDonald's. It worked!

Ancient times.

May 5, 2020

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There's outrage over some of the Michigan protesters wearing Nazi arm bands. What's the problem? Too few were wearing them? If they were all wearing Nazi arm bands all day, we would know who we need to stay away from.

May 5, 2020

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Philosopher, Karl Marx, was born on this day in 1818. 

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Let Michigan know that Karl Marx has a lesson to teach them.

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I CAN NOT WAIT for the Congressional Budget Office's report on the Republicans' tax cut for the ultra-rich masquerading as a health plan. Their voters will tear them all new assholes, and the irony is that after they are voted out, all of their torn assholes will be considered pre-existing conditions.

May 5, 2017

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A superhuman Federer

https://fb.watch/kkI9eb-1xn/?mibextid=irwG9G

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Slate- Mad Men’s Space Odyssey: The 2001 Allusions of “The Monolith”

How did I miss this stuff? I'm slipping.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/05/mad_men_s_2001_a_space_odyssey_the_kubrick_allusions_and_references_of_the.html

May 5, 2014

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TED- The Infinite Hotel Paradox - Jeff Dekofsky

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-infinite-hotel-paradox-jeff-dekofsky

May 5, 2015

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I have one. You too perhaps. This is not a health care plan. It's a several hundred billion dollar tax give-away to the rich, and the real cost is that millions will need to choose between health care or bankruptcy, so the health care companies can make a profit. Maybe we're supposed to feel good about $8 billion in subsidies to cover pre-existing conditions? That $250/person might not go far. I almost wish it would pass so all these guys getting ridden out of town on rails, if it weren't for all the people that would die.

http://time.com/money/4763609/pre-existing-conditions-ahca/

May 5, 2017

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Washington Post- Donald Trump says he’s a big fan of history. But he doesn’t seem to trust historians.

The president to historians: "How would they know that, were they there?" No, they've just dedicated their professional lives to studying history. Odd that it doesn't dawn on the president that HE wasn't there. THE TRUMP HISTORY DOCTRINE: just make up some crap and believe it.

http://wapo.st/2p2IwIE

May 5, 2017

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Sports Illustrated- NSFW Slip of Tongue Leaves Phillies Broadcasters Speechless

https://www.si.com/.amp/extra-mustard/2023/05/03/nsfw-phillies-broadcasters-comment-speechless

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George Carlin- “I’m 63, that’s 17 Celsius.”

I just read that joke and it crossed my mind that it felt like exactly 63 outside. I checked and it was 64. I refreshed it and it was 63. From now on if I see that it's 63, I'm referring to it as 17 Celsius.

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Bruce Lee- "If vou always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."

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Hunter S. Thompson- "Smart people understand that there is no such thing as paranoia. It is just another mask for ignorance. The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears."

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Al-Ghazali- "Desires make slaves out of kings and patience makes kings out of slaves."

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Rumi- "Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder." 

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Jean Paul Sartre- “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”

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Emerson- "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

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Einstein- "Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work..."

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Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story- "She said she could no longer live in New York, that she was being tormented day and night by some obsessive stalker. This caught me completely by surprise, as I had taken to hanging around Sarah’s apartment, hiding in the bushes day and night, watching her come and go, and I had never seen any signs of a stalker."

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Roger Sterling- "“My uncle lost his leg hitching a trailer. He used to ask me to scratch his toes. He didn’t have any.”

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Pascal- "Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death."

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John Archibald Wheeler, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences- "Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or millennial - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?"