Dangers, Ideas, Dangerous Ideas

Marilyn Monroe joined us on this day in 1926. What did we ever do to deserve her?

The Atlantic, "Inventing Marilyn," by Caitlin Flanagan, March 2013. Excerpt:

"Marilyn Monroe was baptized by Aimée Semple McPherson, analyzed by Anna Freud, befriended by Carl Sandburg and Edith Sitwell, romanced (if you can call it that) by Jack and Bobby Kennedy, painted by Willem de Kooning, taught acting by Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg, photographed by Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. She managed—on the strength of limited dramatic talent and within a studio system that paid no attention to individual ambition—to work with some of the greatest directors in movie history: twice with John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks, and once each with George Cukor, Joseph Mankiewicz, and Laurence Olivier. She was the first Playboy centerfold and one of the first women to own her own production company; she was a nudist and a champion of free love long before these concepts emerged into the national consciousness. She maintained a deep association with the American military that, all on its own, lent her a mythic stature. When the Second World War broke out, she became both a teenage war bride and an actual Rosie the Riveter (long days spent working in the fuselage-varnishing room of the Radioplane plant in Burbank); her first cheesecake photographs were taken in the spirit of “morale boosters” for the boys overseas; her famous appearance in Korea—wriggling onstage in her purple sequined dress, popping her glorious platinum head out of the hatch of the camouflaged touring tank rolling her to the next appearance—remains the standard against which any American sex symbol sent to entertain the troops is measured. She was the first celebrity to talk openly about her childhood sexual abuse, a kind of admission that has become so common today that we hardly take notice of it. But to tell reporters in the 1950s that you had been raped as an 8-year-old—and to do so without shame, but rather with a justifiable sense of fury and vengeance—was a breathtaking act of self-assurance."

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Terrible- playing racquetball tonight, I blasted my opponent in the balls. He dropped immediately, rising and rising and rising, screaming in agony. Oh man I felt terrible! And then, this is not my fault, but I couldn't help it, I nearly started laughing. Ugly admission, but I couldn't help it. It was just so incredibly... nuts, I guess is the right word. I feel absolutely terrible about it. Jesus, he couldn't even get up and walk. Not funny, terrible!

I had that once, hit by a lacrosse ball when I was in 12th grade. I lost a part of my soul that day.

June 1, 2023

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Just finished Episodes 4-9 of Star Wars with my kids. With trepidation I'm starting The Phantom Menace. 

"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute."

Oh Christ...

June 1, 2020

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I have a new strategy for dealing with people who call me some variation of "libtard." I ask them what they'd think if I called them a "republitard." Would they consider me more childish or insane? Would they pity me for such a monumental public embarrassment? Republitard... it wouldn't be very clever would it??? In fact, I'd need to be pretty, pretty, pretty stupid to call someone a republitard, wouldn't I? Then I harass them just a bit to get an answer, but really just to force them to think about it. So far... no responses.

June 1, 2020

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From Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny:

We have to assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks. This was the very mistake that some German Jews made about Hitler and the Nazis after they had formed a government. On February 2, 1933, for example, a leading newspaper for German Jews published an editorial expressing this mislaid trust:

'We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check... and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one's better self and away from one's earlier oppositional posture.'

Such was the view of many reasonable people in 1933, just as it is the view of many reasonable people now. The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions - even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.

June 1, 2017

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John Dewey left us when this day in 1952.

"A problem well put is half solved."

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16 Cognitive Distortions, Positive Psychology, by Courtney Ackerman

11. Personalization

As the name implies, this distortion involves taking everything personally or assigning blame to yourself without any logical reason to believe you are to blame.

This distortion covers a wide range of situations, from assuming you are the reason a friend did not enjoy the girls’ night out, to the more severe examples of believing that you are the cause for every instance of moodiness or irritation in those around you.

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Delicious rejections from work. What sort of problems can you get from eating too many strawberries? Because I'm about to get them. Remember Gargamel's song that used to sing about how many different ways he was going to eat the Smurfs? I'm singing that same song but about strawberries. Just got home, half left.

June 1, 2016

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I posted a meme of Jesus knocking at a door and lock a friend on this day in 2014. Might have had something to do with the conversation.

Jesus- Let me in.

Voice- Why?

Jesus- So I can save you.

Voice- From what? 

Jesus- From what I'm going to do to you if I don't let you in.

June 1, 2014

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I'm reading a collection of essays by intellectuals titled "What is your dangerous idea?" The essay I just read said that the most dangerous idea is that we should share our most dangerous ideas, and that he hopes it never catches on. Well played. (Or was it? He shared his!)

June 1, 2014

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Asimov, The Roving Mind- "Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."

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My mechanic today sure could whistle!

June 1, 2011

*11 years later I still think about how good that whistling was. His name was Clement.

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I was just going to ask if anybody else noticed Michael Jordan's Hitler mustache, but it turns out that yes, at least one other person has.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7VY2nDGm6w

Jun 1, 2010

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Onion Headline: After Careful Deliberation, Baby Goes With Homosexuality

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On this day in 1950 was the Declaration of Conscience speech, by U.S. Senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith in which she said as a response to Joseph McCarthy: "The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny - Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear."

She was a... Republican???

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A psychologist Irvin Yalam joined us on this day in 1931. From Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death:

"...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death."

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Adolf Eichmann was hung in Israel on this day in 1962 and the day Marilyn Monroe celebrated her 36th and final birthday.

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Hitler also died on this day in 1960. No, not that one. Paula Hitler. Regular Hitler's little sister. 

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The Heimlich maneuver was first published on this day in 1974 in the journal Emergency Medicine. Good thing I didn't choke on anything in my first 94 days, and that my parents subscribed to Emergency Medicine.

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Second worst president, James Buchanan, died on this day in 1868. As he rode in a carriage with Abraham Lincoln to Lincoln's inauguration he is said to have remarked, "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed." Wrong again Buchanan, I don't think there is anybody less happy in the White House.

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Helen Keller left us on this day in 1968.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."

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Poet Giuseppe Ungaretti left us on this day in 1970. He is the author of a seven-syllable poem titled Mattino, which translates into "Morning."

M'illumino d'immenso 

(I am illuminated by the immense).

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John Dewey again: "We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."

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On this day in 2014 we lost Ann B. Davis, who played the beloved housekeeper from The Brady Bunch. That puts me in mind of a certain limerick:

There was a young lady named Alice

Who was known to have peed in a chalice.

        'Twas the common belief

        It was done for relief,

And not out of protestant malice.

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Taste of Cinema- 12 Less Known Traits Of Wes Anderson’s Authorship In Cinema

Surprising list.

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/12-less-known-traits-of-wes-andersons-authorship-in-cinema/

Jun 1, 2016

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CNN- An agitated Trump encourages governors to use aggressive tactics on protesters

Trump- “You have to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks, you have to arrest and try people…if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse. The only time it’s successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.”

Reich- "Those are the words of our president as he spoke to governors over the phone this morning. No calls for de-escalation or restraint from militarized police forces, no suggestions for governors to sit down and listen to the pain of protesters, no path forward to tackling the systemic injustice that has plagued our country since its founding. Just sneers of derision and more calls for violence. Let’s get one thing clear: meeting protesters fighting police violence with more police violence is not the way forward. The only person who is “weak” in this moment is Trump himself."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/politics/donald-trump-race-police/index.html

Jun 1, 2020

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Fantastic interview with Jerry Seinfeld with Bari Weiss.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jerry-seinfeld-on-the-rules-of-comedy-and-life/id1570872415

A few notes:

-Jerry said that this joke is one of his favorites and encapsulates his worldview. A gardener is tending the church grounds and the pastor comes out, marvels at his work and says "Wow, God's creation." The gardener says, "You should have seen it when he was in charge."

-Somehow he's done transcendental meditation since 1972. Bari called him the most unflappable Jew on Earth he said that TM must have affected his nervous system.

-Larry Charles dubbed him Analogy Lad, he can't help you with anything but he'll tell you what it's like.

-Love this exchange:

Bari- Who's your hero? 

Jerry- Marcus Aurelius. 

Bari- Why? 

Jerry- Perspective, the most important single word in life.

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DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope.

KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

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Bertrand Russell- "And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence."

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Anthony Bourdain- "So you want to be a chef? You really, really, really want to be a chef? If you've been working in another line of business, have been accustomed to working eight-to-nine-hour days, weekends and evenings off, holidays with the family, regular sex with your significant other; if you are used to being treated with some modicum of dignity, spoken to and interacted with as a human being, seen as an equal — a sensitive, multidimensional entity with hopes, dreams, aspirations and opinions, the sort of qualities you'd expect of most working persons — then maybe you should reconsider what you'll be facing when you graduate from whatever six-month course put this nonsense in your head to start with."

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Seneca- "Associate only with people who improve you."

Reminds me of Trump who by his own admission likes to hang around worse people to make himself look better.

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Dylan:

Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

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Albert Einstein- Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.

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Happy Pride Month. Norm Macdonald on gay pride:

https://youtu.be/UhCeYjeDv2A

Addendum 

and so it has been written:

"let the fool laugh at the teacher!

let the big men of business ridicule 

the teacher's meager salary!!

his small car, his decade-old tie.

let the punks in the corner deride this 

educated performer-of-tricks!!

the one who lured mongrels into understanding

what Macbeth is about...

there are lots of ways to roast these

daring dialogists! (not a word)

oh, but who has sweetest comfort!

who is able to say "that year is done!"

and then revel in summer!

who can stand waist high in river water

 on a july Tuesday 

and fish for the mystery of fish in the green below!

who can lounge in the shade with book 

on an early wednesday 

and dream himself anew...without worry!

who can spend their summers with their kids

and delight in the sweet expanse of time

that only youth provides for such a short period!

yes! laugh at the teacher! 

as he walks barefoot through the yard 

june birds singing. a cup of coffee in his hand.

and no where he has to be!"

---from The Random Thoughts of James Woe, Second edition.