Law and Order Anarchists, and Other Miscellany
Ricky Bottalico, breaking down the Phillies game: "When Ranger gets really hot you can expect a lot of in an out action."
Let's keep it clean Ricky! I'm watching this with my kids!
June 13, 2025
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Ahhh schadenfreude, the best thing!
I was approaching an intersection on my way to work, planning to make a left turn while the approaching car was also signaling to make a turn to his left. As I started turning, he kept coming straight. I realized that his turn signal was on accidentally and he was coming right toward me. I was in too deep and had to complete my turn. I was far enough in front of him and knew that I was in no danger once he braked a bit, so I got to sit back enjoy the spectacle. The driver and the passenger both threw up their arms and yelled, no doubt thinking I was the biggest idiot on the face of the earth.
Perhaps I should be a better person, but I really love that feeling of schadenfreude- delighting in the misfortune of others when they deserve it. (Like the feeling I got when that nasty old government took back its documents from that grumpy old man.) Once the other driver realized that his turn signal was on, he had no other option than to realize that he is indeed exactly as stupid as he thought I was, haha.
Jung said, "I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole." I think I know what he meant!
June 13, 2023
Postscript- Maybe they should call it schadenjung!
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George Carlin- "No one knows what’s next, but everybody does it."
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Okay, I'm with Trump on this one. If you're in an electric boat that's sinking, do you want to go down with the boat and be electrocuted, or jump 10 yards over to some shark that's going to eat you? It's a good question!
Ignore the fact that an electric boat is not going to electrocute you, and that he's using the example to have us fear electric vehicles.
Also ignore the fact that Trump and I can't jump 30 ft away from a boat.
And also ignore the fact that he posed this question to help convince a crowd of his supporters that he's an MIT-style genius, the type who thinks about this type of thing (as if there's an MIT professor right now coloring a gray shark on some blue construction paper with a crayon in his fist), as if they need anymore evidence that he's the smartest person on earth!
Ignoring all that, I'm with him. I like those kinds of questions!
June 13, 2024
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Two of my hobbies are completely unrelated- buying books, and reading books. Every year I go to the Lancaster Library book sale and buy way more books than I can read within the next year.
I volunteer to set up the sale, which might seem altruistic, but my motive is purely selfish. Volunteers get to buy books before it opens. I never have enough time to look through all of them on set-up day, so I go the first day too. Then I go again on half price day.
They trick me in to buying too many by reminding me ad nauseum that all the proceeds go to charity. I'd give the library $50 just for the sake of it, so instead, why not buy a whole bunch of donated books? They turned the whole thing into a noble duty. Genius
I made a mistake a couple years ago. My book buying was in check until I read an article on the value of having a ton of books, even if the majority remain unread. The logic is that our bookshelves should not be monuments to the books that we have read, instead they should be aspirational, a monument to the books that we would like to read.
The Japanese even have a word for it- tsundoku.
Khalil Gibran, The Madman- "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."
In the spirit of tsundoku and Khalil Gibran, here's a picture of the aspirational books I got from this year's sale, plus a few I found at Little Free Libraries recently.
Which should I read first?
June 13, 2024
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Kurt Cobain’s visited William S. Burroughs in 1993. After he left, Burroughs said to his secretary, “There’s something wrong with that boy. He frowns for no good reason.”
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Some people think anarchists are far left, but I see it differently. They're not left or right, they are on a different axis. They are defined by a lack of respect for the law, like Trump. Trump is just the type of anarchist who like to shout "law and order!" It throws everybody off his trail, which incidentally is even more disruptive to our norms and institutions than burning down a few police precincts.
June 13, 2020
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Emo Philips- "Cellphones are like a dog’s nipples. You don’t have to shout into them!"
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What a coincidence! Zuzu asked me if I like petunias, and about a minute later I started a new Scrabble game which my opponent began by using all his letters to spell... you guessed it... PETUNIA.
What if she asked me if I believed in God, and a minute later my opponent started the game with GOD? It might have seemed like some divine miracle, or at least a sign. It would have been about a million times more probable though... so as far as coincidences go, only a millionth as impressive.
Maybe I'm overlooking the obvious, maybe God is a petunia.
June 13, 2020
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Trevor Noah- xTo the people still saying, "But if you take down the statues how will people learn their history?" Read a book motherfucker! The Bubonic Plague was a major event in world history, but we don't go around putting up statues of rats."
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Happy birthday to the quintessential anti-hero, Malcolm McDowell, who came to join us in 1943.
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Yesterday the president's lawyers made the argument in court that he cannot be investigated. Special Counsel is recommending that he fire Kellyanne Conway for violating the Hatch Act... not even worth mentioning that he won't even reprimand her. He recently welcomed foreign interference in our next election in his interview with George Stephanopoulos prompting the FEC chair to let everybody know that that is illegal. (We're all assuming that he'll only welcome foreign interference that helps him though, right? Or does he believe in foreign interference in principle?)
Whether you like Trump or whether you don't, I think we can all agree that he doesn't care about the rule of law. Therefore he doesn't care about the establishment of justice. Therefore he doesn't even make it a third of the way through the first sentence of the Constitution before violating his oath to defend it. He sure can hug the flag with the best of them though!
June 19, 2020
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Maybe Trump has a point with all this "fake news"... the media's analysis has been good, but it seems like any time they quote his tweets, cover his rallies, let his surrogates speak or quote an interview in context they just seem to be using the airwaves to put forth lies.
June 13, 2017
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The air conditioning in my car went out and a new compressor would cost $700. My power locks don't work, the ceiling material is in tatters, the back window goes down once in a while, the drivers door leaks when it rains hard, etc, etc. Started looking for a new car today. Turns out I prefer the problems.
June 13, 2015
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My cashier at Giant was a young girl named Phyllis. I didn't know they still made Phyllises.
June 13, 2015
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So... The Ghost Writer is playing at Kendig. Is paying to see one of Roman Polanski's movies tantamount to supporting him? To go or not to go...
June 13, 2010
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Rhode Island became the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves on this day in 1774. I guess sometimes it's easiest to start small.
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Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor, was born on this day in 823. Man, I'm bald, and I couldn't care less, but it's not really the one thing I'd want to be known for.
Charles the Fat, Holy Roman Emperor, was born on this day in 839. Now this is getting ridiculous. I wonder if having a fat leader is the harbinger of the end of your civilization.
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W. B. Yeats joined us on this day in 1865.
"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."
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Ben Johnson was born on this day in 1918. As Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show, he won best the supporting actor Oscar, essentially for this monologue:
"You wouldn’t believe how this country’s changed. First time I seen it, there wasn’t a mesquite tree on it, or a prickly pear neither. I used to own this land, you know. First time I watered a horse at this tank was more than forty years ago. I reckon the reason why I always drag you out here is probably I’m just as sentimental as the next feller when it comes to old times. Old times. I brought a young lady swimmin’ out here once, more than 20 years ago. Was after my wife had lost her mind and my boys was dead. Me and this young lady was pretty wild, I guess. In pretty deep. We used to come out here on horseback and go swimmin’ without no bathing suits. One day, she wanted to swim the horses across this tank. Kind of a crazy thing to do, but we done it anyway. She bet me a silver dollar she could beat me across. She did. This old horse I was ridin’ didn’t want to take the water. But she was always lookin’ for somethin’ to do like that. Somethin’ wild. I’ll bet she’s still got that silver dollar. … Being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do."
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Ralph McQuarrie was born on this day in 1929. He was largely responsible for the look of Star Wars.
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The psychologist Irvin Yalom joined us on this day in 1931, he's still alive.
“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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Christo and Jeanne-Claude were somehow each born on this day in 1935. Might be a ruse.
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Weezer's Rivers Cuomo was born on this day in 1970.
Surf Wax America
… The sea is foamin' like a bottle of beer
The wave is comin but I ain't gonna fear
I'm waxin' down so that I'll go real fast
I'm waxin' down because it's really a blast
I'm goin' surfin 'cause I don't like your face
I'm bailin' out because I hate the race
Of rats that run round and round in the maze
I'm goin' surfin', I'm goin' surfin'
… You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you're out of fuel
I'm still afloat
… My buddies and their honeys all come along
They seem invincible as they surf along
The sea is rollin' like a thousand pound keg
We're goin' surfin', we're goin' surfin'
… You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you're out of fuel
I'm still afloat
… You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you're out of fuel
I'm still afloat
… All along the undertow is strengthening it's hold
I never thought it'd come to this
Now I can never go home
All along the undertow is strengthening it's hold
I never thought it'd come to this
Now I can never go home
… You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you're out of fuel
I'm still afloat
… All along the undertow is strengthening it's hold
I never thought it'd come to this
Now I can never go home
… You take your car to work
I'll take my board
And when you're out of fuel
I'm still afloat
… You take your car, I'll take my board
You take your car, I'll take my board
Let's go
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Bavaria's Mad King Ludwig was either murdered or killed himself on this day in 1866.
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Philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, left us on this day in 1965.
"The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God."
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On this day in 2005, the jury acquitted Michael Jackson of his charges for allegedly sexually molesting a child in 1993.
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We lost Cormac McCarthy today.
I love that in 2009 he sold his Olivetti typewriter, on which he wrote all of his earlier novels, for just over a quarter million dollars. He bought an identical one for less than $20 and kept writing.
Lawrence Krauss- "Cormac changed my life one day when I first met him..asking him how he could be chipper with such dark books.. He said "I'm a pessimist... but that's no reason to be gloomy". That became a sort of motto for me. Thank you Cormac. I will miss you."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/books/cormac-mccarthy-dead.html
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Other notable birthdays- Tim Allen (1953), Ally Sheedy (1962), Laura Kightlinger (1969), Kat Dennings (1986), Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (1986)
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Other notable deathdays- Tim Russert (2008), Ned Beatty (2021) American actor (b. 1937)[36]
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It's funny seeing people defend Trump by saying that he declassified the documents. These are often the same people telling everybody to not be fooled by the mainstream media. They should read the indictment, and see that Trump himself doesn't believe he had the ability to declassify the documents, as he bragged about them, showing them off, haha. Ignore the media dudes, read the indictment.
June 13, 2023
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Yeats again- "There is another world, but it is in this one."
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The Atlantic, June 13, 2018- Trump’s ‘Great Chemistry’ With Murderous Strongmen
Great headline. Some like the president because of the economy. Is it too much to ask for a good economy AND a president who doesn't praise murderous dictators and alienate allies?
"On a whole lot of occasions, Trump has gone out of his way to tell the public that he likes dictators or the way that they repress people. I believe him. That’s why I am morally disgusted. Trump is a depraved man who taints American honor and ideals."
Trump is America's taint.
https://trib.al/fPdlqkS
June 13, 2018
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The Atlantic again- Trump and His Supporters Thrive in Cruelty
Not all of his supporters, but certainly his more rabid ones. They would literally still support him if he shot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue. The guy had it coming right? And the penalty for treason is death, right? It's right there in the Constitution. You believe in the Constitution, right? Sure, his approval rating might dip into the low 30's.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/577960/trump-cruel/
June 13, 2019
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Albert Einstein's on Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy:
"Bertrand Russell's 'History of Philosophy' is a precious book. I don't know whether one should more admire the delightful freshness and originality or the sensitivity of the sympathy with distant times and remote mentalities on the part of this great thinker. I regard it as fortunate that our so dry and also brutal generation can point to such a wise, honourable, bold and at the same time humorous man. It is a work that is in the highest degree pedagogical which stands above the conflicts of parties and opinions."
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Yeats yet again:
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and sigh.
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Bill Burr, on facelifts- "What would you rather be? 52 and look 52, or 52 and look like a 28-year-old lizard?"
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NPR- Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They'll Learn To Cook
"The study also offers a reminder that very few behaviors are uniquely human, Wrangham says. "What we're seeing here is that the chimps are surprisingly similar to humans, even though the whole process of cooking seems like something that is a huge divide between humans and other animals.""
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/03/411748170/chimps-are-no-chumps-give-them-an-oven-theyll-learn-to-cook
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I kept my emotions in check when Ryne Sandberg got tossed. Gretel did not.
June 13, 2014
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Gorilla hijinks. Stuff like this has been going on for what, hundreds of thousands of years? Millions?
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1437086980455589
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Dylan:
"Now, a very great man once said,
That some people rob you with a fountain pen."
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Albert Einstein- "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."
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Ann Druyan, author and the wife of Carl Sagan joined us on this day in 1949.
"When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."
Wonderful quote. They didn't just have each other. We had them. Time for wine.
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