Beautiful Solutions
Debbie Harry was born on this day in 1945, the epitome of '70s pop and beauty.
"I could be a housewife… I guess I’ve vacuumed a couple of times."
Marlon Brando left us on this day in 2004.
"The view is better from a greater age. Suddenly, you see the entire line--where things were, where things are going, where they veered out of control. The long view. And I think the mistake we make--certainly the mistake I made--was to think too small, too safe. I think that life was meant to be big. I think that people were meant to be big. I don't mean through gesture or demands: I mean big of heart and impact. We are here for a very short run of the timeline, and if a mark isn't made, if people aren't helped or moved by what we've done, then we haven't mattered. Show up to matter, not to be liked. Show up to be big. Investigate your heart and the hearts of others to find out what the big thing needed at that time might be."
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Nixon- “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."
Wow, Nixon got that one right??? Biden can do anything he wants? He can have the military barricade the 6 Republican Supreme Court appointees in their houses tomorrow, and we can have a revote? That seems like a bizarre power to grant him.
July 1, 2024
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Excellent work for 4. I'd consider it excellent work for 46. At first I thought she just colored it, but she designed it too.
July 1, 2020
(Puffed up with a temporary kidney disease.)
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Poem written by Carmel, the AI working on the Zodiac case. (And I thought the Zodiac codes were hard to crack.)
"Through the taxi and the prison break,
Alone and angry at a brutal murder.
Surrounded by an artificial lake,
Never a convicted murderer.
Like an aggravated battery,
A world of pain and murder, gunman kills."
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From The 400 Blows:
Son: I need some money for lunch, dad. Only 1,000 francs.
Dad: Therefore you hope for 500. Therefore you need 300. Here's 100. (pause) And another 500.
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So if not for the stolen Supreme Court seat the Democrats would be up 5-4 after the replacement of Kennedy. The Republicans played tough and Obama rolled over and let them pet his belly. So to set this straight the next Democratic president should install two during recess. Of course the Republicans could then do the same thing. But they'd be wrong, these two appointments are what would correct a wrong. To make it sporting one of the two could be a swing vote type. I know this sounds nuts, but I'm pretty sure presidents do have the right to do it.
July 1, 2018
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Continuing personal attacks by the president this morning... distraction by disruption. I predict this will go on and on until we're at war, the ultimate distraction. Did you hear what he said about North Korea yesterday? "The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed." Yes the world would be a better place without Kim Jong Un, but what does South Korea think about this recklessness? I imagine they've been living in a 6-month Bay of Pigs scenario, thoughts of possible obliteration always at the forefront of their thoughts.
July 1, 2017
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Did you hear that the president just ate a raccoon turd on live TV? What a bombshell! Many on the right are saying that although it probably didn't taste good, might not cause blindness, and definitely does not set a good example, it's not impeachable, not even against the law, and any way isn't it preferable to Hillary Clinton selling uranium to Russia?
July 1, 2017
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From The 400 Blows;
"Every time I cried, my father would imitate me on his fiddle, just to drive me nuts. One day I got fed up and I knocked him out."
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Watching West Side Story with Emma and Gretel. Emma just asked, "Don't these miscreants have anything better to do?" Who knew Emma's last name was Krupke???
July 1, 2015
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I swear that my dog just moonwalked!
July 1, 2013
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Emma asked me which I love more- my dog or my unborn child. Apparently I answered correctly. Was that a fair question?
July 1, 2013
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Carl Sagan:
For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: "We came in peace for all Mankind." As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.
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I bet Bob Barker wouldn't like dogs as much if he was born with a different last name. If his name was Bob Slither, he'd be all about snakes.
July 1, 2010
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Open question to the audience of Midnight In Paris- Did you really get the Bunuel reference, or were you just laughing along with everyone else because you knew you were supposed to get it?
July 1, 2011
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On this day in 1770, Lexell's Comet was seen closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 1,360,000 miles.
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The Battle of Gettysburg began on this day in 1863. General John F. Reynolds lost his life, hit by a sharpshooter as he lead his men into battle. He had secretly become engaged before the battle, and they say that his ghost wonders the street outside of his former house at 42 West King Street looking for his lost love.
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From The 400 Blows:
"I have no socks left around these holes."
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Philosopher and mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, was born on this day in 1646. He invented (or discovered) calculus concurrently with Newton, and believed that this was the best of all possible worlds. Occasionally, in some of the best moments of my life, I believe that he's right. Then, of course, I come to my senses.
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Voltaire- "If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?"
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George Sand was born on this day in 1804. "George Sand" was her pen name; her real name was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. Her writing is good whether she's a man or a woman, correct? Of course. The same as a painting is good whether it's painted by a man or a woman. The same as a rational argument is made by a man or a woman. It's either right or it's wrong, regardless of gender. Regardless of race, regardless of anything other than the thing in itself. Many forget this these days.
"Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views."
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Grover Cleveland on July 1 underwent secret surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.
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Franz Kafka's diary entry, July 1, 1914- "Too tired."
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David Duke, American white supremacist, politician and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, was born on this day in 1950. Donald Trump definitely doesn't know who he is, even enough to tell us whether or not he thinks he's a bad guy.
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Ernst Rohm was killed on this day, in The Night of the Long Knives. Somehow, somehow, he was a gay Nazi military officer who co-founded the SA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm
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Buckminster Fuller left us in 1983. One of my college professors was one of his students, so what does that make him, my grandprofessor?
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
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Wolfman Jack left us on this day in 1995. His voice set the time and place in American Graffiti.
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Outlaw poet David Lerner left us on this day in 1997.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2007/05/david-lerner
See if his poem Mein Kampf doesn't let your head on fire.
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Betty Francis is dying and her philadering ex-husband calls her.
Don Draper- "Birdie..."
Betty- "I know."
I love it when fewer words convey more than more words ever could.
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The word "personality" did not exist in English until the 17th century. The idea of having a good personality didn't exist until the 20th century. This was largely based on the popularity of the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Men were supposed to have an outgoing personality with a lot of character. Women were supposed to fascinate people. What nonsense! Of course we carry it all today, just indifferent ways.
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Olivia de Havilland was born on this day in 1916.
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The International Criminal Court was established on this day in 2002 to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
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Other notable birthdays- Charles Laughton (1899), William Wyler (1902), Farley Granger (1925), Leslie Caron (1931), Jamie Farr (1934), Sydney Pollack (1934), David Prowse (1935), Karen Black (1939), Dan Aykroyd (1952), Diana, Princess of Wales (1961)
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Other notable deathdays- The Public Universal Friend (1819), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1896), Robert Mitchum (1996), Karl Malden (2008)
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Buckminster Fuller again:
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
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George Carlin:
Here’s all you need to know about men and women: Women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a big one. And by the way, if you don’t think men are stupid, check the newspaper. Ninety-nine percent of all the truly horrifying shit going on in this world was initiated, established, perpetrated, enabled or continued by men. And that includes the wave and the high five, two of history’s truly low points.
But as I say, besides knowing that men are stupid, it’s also important to remember that women are crazy. And if you don’t think women are crazy, ask a man. That’s the one thing men aren’t stupid about; they know for sure, way down deep in their hearts, that women are straight-out fuckin’ nuts.
But it doesn’t just happen; it isn’t an accident. Women have good reason to be nuts, the main one being that in the course of life, compared with men, they have far more to put up with; they bear greater burdens. Think of it this way: In the Big Cosmic Cafeteria, as human beings move down the chow line of life and reach that section where the shit is being spooned out, women are given several extra portions.
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New York Magazine, July 1, 2017- Now We Have a Road Map to the Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Russia, By Jonathan Chait
Interesting story, but will it be proven? I'm guessing that it will. There must be some reason that within the last week all the Republican pundits starting saying it doesn't matter if there was collusion. From the article:
The key to understanding the significance of this report is to put it together with a sentence from Harris’s first story on this in the Journal, which reports that U.S. investigators “have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/now-we-have-a-roadmap-to-trump-campaigns-russia-collusion.html
July 1, 2017, 6:13 PM
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From the conservative National Review... blistering column.
"Trump has shown himself intellectually and emotionally incapable of making the transition from minor entertainment figure to major political figure. He is in the strange position of being a B-list celebrity who is also the most famous man in the world. His recent Twitter attack on Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe exemplifies that as much as it does the president’s other by-now-familiar pathologies, notably his strange psychological need to verbally abuse women in physical terms."
And on and on...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/25/paper-ballots-hackproof-bring-them-back-glenn-reynoldscolumn/416652001?sfns=mo
July 1, 2017
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USA Today, June 25, 2017- Paper ballots are hack-proof. It's time to bring them back.
Could there be something simpler? And the thing is... it's in everybody's best interest to be able to trust election results, whatever the results are.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/25/paper-ballots-hackproof-bring-them-back-glenn-reynoldscolumn/416652001?sfns=mo
July 1, 2019
Postscript- What a quaint notion! People will find absolutely any reason to distrust election results, including putting their 100% faith in a carnival barker.
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10 Philosophers Who Died in Bizarre Ways
https://listverse.com/2023/06/16/10-philosophers-who-died-in-bizarre-ways
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Buckminster, yet again- "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
This notion is wildly applicable.
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The longest common monosyllablic word- squirreled.
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Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary- "Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
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Russell Kane told a heckler, "Why don't you go into that corner and finish evolving."
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Tom Waits- "The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!"
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
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Ricky Gervais-"Remember, being healthy is basically dying as slowly as possible.”
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Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence:
"If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world?" Birbal was a devout Brahmin from Trivikrampur, but he answered unhesitatingly, "I would say to them that in my opinion they were all atheists as well; I merely believe in one god less than each of them." "How so?" the Emperor asked. "All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal. "And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none."
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Jung- "What you resist, persists."
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Albert Einstein- "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
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No William won't.
Addendum
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential:
As usual, I had no idea where we were going. Philippe led me across Roppongi, crossing to the skankier, glitzier side where the streets were choked with touts and barkers, whores and shills, video arcades, hostess bars and love hotels. We passed by the poodle-cut pimpy boys and the heavily made-up Thai, Filipina and Malaysian women in their platform boots and crotch-high dresses, past enormous and eerily empty Yakuza-run nightclubs, karaoke bars, restaurants. It became darker as we walked farther and farther from the neon and screaming video signs-yet still, not a rude comment or hostile stare. Finally, Philippe stopped, sniffed the air like a hunting dog, turned suddenly and headed for a dimly lit stairwell in a deserted courtyard, a single pictogram of a leaping fish the only indicator of activity below. Down a flight of steps, not a sound, to a bare sliding door. He pushed it aside and we were standing in a small, well-lit sushi bar. Three young sushi chefs in headbands and two older men in chefs' coats manned an unfinished blond-wood bar, packed with somewhat inebriated-looking businessmen and their dates. We were ushered to the only two open seats, directly in front of a slowly melting monolith of carved ice, surrounded by fish and shellfish so fresh, so good-looking, it took my breath away. My chef friends in New York would have gouged out an eye or given up five years of their lives for the meal I was about to have.
First, hot towels. Then the condiments: freshly grated wasabi, some dipping sauce. We were brought frozen sake, thick, cloudy, utterly delicious. The first sip seemed to worm its way directly into my brain like an intoxicating ice-cream headache. I had many more sips, Philippe all too anxious to pour more and more. The first tiny plate, tentacles of baby octopus, arrived, the chef standing there while we ate, examining our reactions-which were, of course, moans, smiles, bows of appreciation and thanks. Already feeling the sake, we thanked him in French, English and bad Japanese-covering all bases. More bows. The chef removed the plates.
His hands moved, a few motions with a knife, and we were presented with the internal parts of a giant clam, still pulsating with life as it died slowly on our plates. Again, the chef watched as we ate. And again, we were a good audience, closing our eyes, transported. Next came abalone with what might have been the roe and liver of something-who cared? It was good.
More sake. Snapper came next. Then bass. Then mackerel, fresh and squeaky and lovely to look at.
We went on, calling for more, our appetites beginning to attract notice from the other chefs and some of the customers who'd never it seemed, seen anyone-especially Westerners- with our kind of appetites. Each time the chef put another item down in front of us, I detected almost a dare, as if he didn't expect us to like what he was giving us, as if any time now he'd find something too much for our barbarian palates and crude, unsophisticated palates.
No way. We went on. Calling for more, more, Philippe telling the chef, in halting Japanese, that we were ready for anything he had-we wanted his choice, give us your best shot, motherfucker (though I'm sure he phrased it more elegantly). The other customers began to melt away, and our hosts, the chef joined by an assistant now, seemed impressed with our zeal, the blissed-out looks on our faces, our endless capacity for more, more, more. Another clam arrived, this one tiny, more roes, some baby flounder-it kept coming, accompanied by pickled wasabi stem, seaweed so fresh I could taste deep ocean water. Another tiny moist towel was provided in a little basket and Philippe informed me that custom allowed us to eat with our hands at this point in the meal. Tuna arrived, from the belly, from the loin. We kept grinning, kept bowing, kept eating.
Our sakes were refilled, the chef openly smiling now. These crazy gaijin wanted it all, baby! The best course yet arrived: a quickly grilled, halved fish head. The chef watched us, curious, I imagine, to see how we'd deal with this new development.
It was unbelievable: every crevice, every scrap of this sweet, delicate dorade or Chilean pompano (I didn't know from looking at the partly charred face, and by now didn't much care) had responded differently to the heat of the grill. From the fully cooked remnant of body behind the head to the crispy skin and cartilage, the tender, translucently rare cheeks, it was a mosaic of distinct flavors and textures. And the eye! Oh, yeah! We dug out the orbs, slurped down the gelatinous matter behind it, deep in the socket, we gnawed the eyeball down to a hard white core. When we were done with this collage of good stuff, when we'd fully picked over every tiny flake and scrap, there was nothing left but teeth and a few bones. Were we finished? No way! More sashimi, more sushi, some tiger shrimp, what looked like herring-so fresh it crunched. I didn't care what they put in front of me any more, I trusted the smiling chef and his crew, I was going along for the full ride. More frozen sake . . . more food. The last few customers got up and lurched to the door-like us, red-faced and perspiring from the booze. We continued. There had to be something we hadn't tried yet! I was beginning to think that some of the cooks were calling their homes by now, telling their families get in here and get a load of these gaijins!! They're eating everything in the store!
After course twenty or so, the chef slit, brushed, dabbed and formed the final course: a piece of raw sea eel. Earthenware cups of green tea were delivered. Finally, we were done. We left to the usual bows and screams of 'Arigato gozaimashiTAAA!!!' and picked our way carefully, very carefully, up the stairs, back to the physical world.
I left Philippe at Les Halles, had a couple of cocktails at an empty faux-Irish pub and staggered back to my apartment. I had to get up early for the fish market.
Tsukiji, Tokyo's central fish market, puts New York's Fulton Street to shame. It's bigger, better, and unlike its counterpart in Manhattan a destination worth visiting if only to gape.
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