Toto, Totoro, and the Bummer of Humanity

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country- "Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?"

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I played racquetball so hard last night. After I lost a couple games and was way down in the third, I somehow dug down deep and came back and won. 

We were talking about it afterwards, how strange that is. If I'm at my house it's almost a chore to bend down to pick something up, but at racquetball and play hard the whole night. 

We need to focus on the mental over the physical. If I just approach everything in my everyday life as if I'm playing racquetball, I probably won't have all these little aches and pains. It's like Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile, some limits are just in your head. Racquetball as a Metaphor for Life.

June 3, 2022

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I can't convince Gretel that the dog in The Wizard of Oz is named Toto, not Totoro. Where did she develop her excellent taste in movies?

June 3, 2018

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Quote from Nihilist Memes: 

"Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill them all and you are a god."

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I just found all of the necklaces and bracelets I used to wear sometimes in high school. I'm not as much of a fan of accoutrements these days. There's a story associated with each one but I'll be damned if i can remember them. (Something among these things stank.)

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Boy, that Kathy Griffin sure screwed things up huh??? How many times worse would she have to be before she took a step towards dooming the planet, called for a new nuclear arms race, said we should kill the families of terrorists, admitted obstructing justice, and had obvious intent to destroy our institutions? Evidently her big mistake was apologizing instead of doing increasingly worse things ever day for years, and not having tens of millions of followers who believe everything she says.

June 3, 2017

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"There's a girl on the way for Emma and I! From the looks of the inside of her brain she's going to be a smarty."

June 3, 2013

***Funny thing about this- only 14 likes, haha! I always look at stuff like that as a badge of honor.

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Sarah Palin, on Paul Revere- "He warned the British that they weren't going be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."

Look it up. The lilt in her voice when she realizes that she has no idea what she's talking about is priceless.

June 3, 2011

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"George Washington's teeth were made from the wood of the cherry tree Abraham Lincoln chopped down." -Sarah Palin, probably

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Interviewer: Do you not feel you’ve had enough sometimes?

Chomsky: It’s like seeing a child in the street and a truck coming rapidly. Do you say, “Look, I’m too busy thinking about interesting questions, so I’ll let the truck kill the child”? Or do you go out into the street and pull the child back?

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George Carlin- "There's nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are fucked!"

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Huh... there are still people around who had parents who fought in the Civil War! If someone was 20 in 1865, they were 80 in 1925, could have married someone young, and had a kid who is now 95.

June 3, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/last-person-to-receive-a-civil-war-era-pension-dies-11591141193

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Now THAT is a rebuke. And from someone conservatives revered when he served under Trump. So he's a guy who might know what he's talking about. "Threat to the Constitution"... he's being literal, not hyperbolic. Take this stuff seriously.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

Jun 3, 2020

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Morris Bush was born on this day in 1930. He played Dengar in Empire Strikes Back, although he has no lines and is not even credited. His face makes a brief appearance in Jabba's Palace and Return the Jedi, and he was actually a stand in for David Prowse in A New Hope. It's his feet that you see stepping on Ben Kenobi's cloak after he's killed.

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Jack Kevorkian left us on this day in 2011, body to the past, ideals to the future. 

"When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it."

Again, can everybody follow that example?

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Meat

Yesterday morning my refrigerator quit refrigerating so I had to save the frozen items. I filled up a box of frozen meat, intended to take it downstairs to the chest freezer, but discovered it sitting on the kitchen counter when I got home from work. I decided to cook up the room-temperature meat. I put 8 pork chops in the crock pot with kale and spring onions, and I put a small steak and large ham slice on the grill. After 10 minutes I flipped the meat on the grill. After a half hour I removed two hockey pucks. Still intent on eating them I put them in a container to go into the fridge. I woke up this morning to a delicious but slightly burnt aroma. Turned out I left he crock pot on high all night. And I discovered the hockey puck grill meat still on the counter. If you want any of my two-year old burnt-up freezer grill and crock pot meat it's out in the backyard, but you might have to fight a raccoon for it. Ever have the feeling it's just might be a long way down?

June 3, 2010

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One of the people who plotted the kidnap and murder the Michigan Governor said that God gave him the okay. "God gave the OK." The last refuge of a scoundrel.

June 3, 2021

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Rue McClanahan left us on this day in 2010.

A delivery man came to the Golden Girls door and said, "Flowers for Blanche Deverux."

Dorothy corrected him, "It's Devereaux." Then under her breath, "It's only pronounced Deverux in limericks."

And in a different episode:

Blanche- Damn it, I just hate to be the brunt of jokes. 

Dorothy- Funny, you don't mind being the brunt of limericks. 

Blanche- That's different. That's poetry.

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On this day in 1940, The Battle of Dunkirk ended with a German victory and with Allied forces in full retreat. Reminds me of the Norm Macdonald joke about the Germans for the second time picking as their foe- the world- they almost won!

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The Seven Year Itch was released on this day in 1955. Much is made out of subway grate, but this is the perfect clip. "I just washed my hair!"

https://fb.watch/lePC3ocR0K/?mibextid=irwG9G

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This day in 1972, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays each had 648 home runs, and were photographed together with Willie on first base and Hank holding him on. 

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Memphis Minnie was born on this day in 1897, who apparently liked to sell her pork chops. I don't know. I think there might be a little bit more to it than that.

I met a man the other day

"What you write?" he say

"Is you the lady givin' that gravy away?

"If it is I will be back today."

You can come and get some, but you can't stay long

I got two men I got to be waitin' on

I'm selling my pork chops

But I'm giving my gravy away

Don't mean maybe

I'm giving my gravy away

I'm selling my pork chops...

Boys, I've been selling good now for two-three days

Some of this stuff I sure got to give away

I'm selling my pork chops...

Up this morning, I see a man at my back door

He'd been there all night trying to get some more

I'm selling my pork chops...

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Allen Ginsberg was born on this day in 1926, incidentally two days after Marilyn Monroe.

He said, "I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view."

Allen Ginsburg, top echelon poet, but piece of shit scientist.

I thought about not posting this, but then I took Ginsburg's advice: 

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness."

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Novelist, Larry McMurtry, was born on this day in 1936. That guy was a writer! From The Last Picture Show:

Is growin' up always miserable?" Sonny asked. "Nobody seems to enjoy it much."

"Oh, it ain't necessarily misearble," Sam replied. "About eighty percent of the time, I guess."

They were silent again, Sam the Lion thinking of the lovely, spritely girl he had once led into the water, right there, where they were sitting.

"We ought to go to a real fishin' tank next year," Sam said finally. "It don't do to think about things like that too much. If she were here now I'd probably be crazy again in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous?"

A half-hour later, when they had gathered up the gear and were on the way to town, he answered his own question. "It ain't really, " he said. "Being crazy about a woman like her's always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones is what's ridiculous."

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Erland Philip Peter Van Lidth De Jeude, Terror from The Wanderers, joined us on this day in 1953. 

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Anderson Cooper was born on this day in 1967. You know how my kids know him? On one of his New Year's Eve repartees, his buddy asked him if he ever wiped his butt with a leaf and he said he has, and that hasn't everybody? I think I coined the term, but it really caught on. Anderson Cooper, The Leaf-Wiping Pooper. That's how my kids know him. Any time they see him they mention it.

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Rafael Nadal was born on this day in 1986, and today on his 36th birthday he made it to the finals of the French Open, somehow perched ready to win his 14th title.

June 3, 2022

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Other notable birthdays- Jefferson Davis (1808), Paulette Goddard (1910)

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Lou Gehrig hit four home runs on this day in 1932. Crazier yet, his longest hit that day was a 460ft fly out, caught in deep center field at Yankee Stadium.

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Meme:

Me- My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic 

AAA- Sir, this is Triple A.

Me- I know. I'm explaining why my car's in the lake.

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Khalil Gibran- "Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - 

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Oscar Wilde- "One can live for years sometimes, without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into a single hour."

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Franz Kafka left us on this day in 1924 at the age of 40. Should we respect the wishes of the dead? 

Kafka entrusted his friend to burn all of his manuscripts after his death, at the time all unpublished. Come on, that's a dumb wish! And a good friend for not respecting it.

David Foster Wallace- "No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home."

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Katia and Maurice Krafft died on this day in 1991. They were the married couple featured in the Werner Herzog documentary, Into the Inferno, and died in a lava flow on Mount Unzen, in Japan. Maurice had said, "I am never afraid because I have seen so many eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don't care". That's a couple who was passionate about what they do! You can't help but think that there's a limit, but I'm nobody to judge.

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On this day in 2007, Shane Victorino hit a walk-off home run, on the same day they gave out a bobblehead figurine of him.

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Muhammad Ali left us on this day in 2016. 

“My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.”

Before Chuck Wepner left his hotel room to fight Muhammad Ali for the championship, he was very confident and he told his wife to put on her negligee because she was going to be sleeping with a champion that night. After losing, he returned to the hotel room and found her in her negligee. She asked, "Is Ali coming to my room or am I going over to his?"

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Excerpt from McSweeney's- What Some Poets Would Sat If They Were Around For National Donut Dat, by Melissa Balmain, Writing as Allen Ginsburg:

I saw the best behinds of my generation destroyed by trans fats, awful to picture buck naked, jiggling through Safeway at all hours looking for a carbo fix,

muddleheaded creatives and coders and gig workers hoping to jumpstart their noodles after banging them against their keyboards,

who deadlines and nondeadlines had driven to crossed eyes and e-cigs and procrastination in the cubicles of coworking spaces,

who racked their brains for meme riffs and live tweets while looking longingly over rooftops at real things,

who had once passed their university exams cum laude and summa cum laude after studying among the nation’s top scholars,

who rose unshowered from their laptops in their coffee-stained joggers in the unflattering shadow of overhead tubes for the love of cocoa with alkali alkali agar agar pregelatinized hydrogenated buys that shivered their cellulite down to the last free radical with the absolute heart-pounding belief that this snack run would pump life into their own dadbods & mombods, good to eat a thousand Entenmann’s.

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I'm not sure where this story originated, but it's a must read:

Kafka, the Lost Doll and the Little Girl

Franz Kafka, the story goes, encountered a little girl in the park where he went walking daily. She was crying. She had lost her doll and was desolate.

Kafka offered to help her look for the doll and arranged to meet her the next day at the same spot. Unable to find the doll he composed a letter from the doll and read it to her when they met.

“Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world. I will write you of my adventures.” This was the beginning of many letters. When he and the little girl met he read her from these carefully composed letters the imagined adventures of the beloved doll. The little girl was comforted.

When the meetings came to an end Kafka presented her with a doll. She obviously looked different from the original doll. An attached letter explained: “my travels have changed me… “

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McMurtry, from The Last Picture Show again:

"Why hell yes, Joe Bob! A cripple can always get himself a wooden leg, or a glass eye, or a metal hook for a hand, or any of that mess -- but there ain't no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you is out of luck!"

You see what I mean? This guy was a writer!

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Bruce Chatwin- "Among military fraternities of Ancient Germany, a young man, as part of his training to stifle inhibitions against killing, was required to strip naked; to dress himself in the hot, freshly flayed skin of a bear; to work himself into a "bestial" rage, in other words, to go, quite literally, berserk. 

"Bearskin" and "berserk" are the same word. The helmets of the Royal Guards, on duty outside Buckingham Palace, are descendants of this primitive battle costume.

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B.N. Chakravarty, India Speaks to America- "The Americans are a funny lot; they drink whiskey to keep them warm; then they put some ice in it to make it cool; then they put some sugar in it to make it sweet, and then they put a slice of lemon in it to make it sour. Then they say, here's to you, and drink it themselves."

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Dylan:

A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

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Albert Einstein- "Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."