Horseshit For Roses

My dear friend Phil Zeigler passed away today. I can barely imagine visiting Fairmount in the future and coming home without one of his anecdotes bouncing around my head. I'm really going to miss that guy. You know who I won't miss though? His cheap aunt. You know how cheap she was? She was so cheap she would squeeze a buffalo nickel until it would shit fifteen cents. I'm going to have to scour my journals for other Philisms. They don't make them like that anymore.

Found a prior post with characteristic anecdote:

I was just watching a parade with my friend Phil who grew up in the 30's. He said, "When we would have parades in my small town of West York there were horses, and these two old little ladies would go out in the street with their dust pans and fight over the horseshit to put on their roses." That is a gold nugget of an anecdote.

A minute later a family walked by- mom, dad, 4 kids aged maybe 2-8. Phil said, "I'm no prude but look at that dad's shirt. I don't think that's right." It said- I DON'T GIVE A FLYIN' HILLBILLY FUCK.

I said, "That's probably the 2018 equivalent of fighting over horseshit in the street." Or at least that's what I wish I said, but it took me 2 hours to think of it.

July 3, 2020

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“Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.”

M.F.K. Fisher was born on this day in 1908. That is good advice.

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The Democrats are giving millions of dollars to the far right candidates in the hopes they get the nominations and are easier to beat in the general election.

David Brooks, from his New York Times opinion piece- Why on Earth Is Pelosi Supporting the Trumpists?:

"With the Democrats are doing is sleazy in the best of circumstances. If you love your country more than your party, you should want the best candidates to advance in either party. And in these circumstances, what they are doing is insane."

It seems like this strategy has gone wildly wrong in the past.

July 3, 2022

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George Carlin:

"Some people are really fucking stupid. Did you ever notice how many stupid people you run into during the day? There's a lot of stupid [people] walking around. Carry a pad and pencil with you, you'll wind up with 30 or 40 names by the end of the day. Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that."

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Emma was just telling me about this thing where Dollar Tree fanatics come home with all the stuff they bought and make videos of it. They post the videos which then get thousands of views. I came upstairs and looked at July 3rd on my desk calendar to see this:

Franz Kafka, born 1883: Writer expressed the frustrations and anxieties of modern life.

And they didn't even have Dollar Trees back then!

July 3, 2018

Postscript- Here he is on a birthday cake.

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Sometimes the best jokes are the result of taking a risk. I was putting Zuzu to bed the other night and asked if she wanted to see fireworks this year. She said no. She's afraid of them. She said that she doesn't like when she can see some flaming bits come down. 

I said something crazy that no parent has ever said before when putting their 8-year-old kid to bed. Calmly and slowly I said, "You don't have to worry about that. Only one or two thousand people are killed every year by those flaming bits."

She sat up and said, "WHAAAT???" 

I said I was joking. She was quiet for a second and then burst out laughing. We both knew it was a crazy thing for me to say, which made it all the funnier.

July 3, 2024

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Here's a tip, never say this to your 7-month pregnant girlfriend before she takes a walk at 10pm- "Have fun, and don't let any lunatic cut that baby out of you." And let me be clear, don't say that to YOUR girlfriend. MY girlfriend thinks that kind of joke is funny.

July 3, 2015

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Zinger of zingers from pre-scandal John Edwards, about Dick Cheney in the 2004 VP debate- "The Vice President, I’m surprised to hear him talk about records when he was one of 435 members of the United States House, weighs one of ten to vote against head start. He was one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It’s amazing to hear him criticize either my record or John Kerry’s."

July 3, 2013

Postscript- quaint that that was my go-to political zinger prior to Trump. After Trump, the best thingers came from the right, endless zingers for a perfectly horrible person.

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I just went to Rent-A-Center to rent a vaccuum. There were no other customers and all five employees enthusiastically told me I had to go to Rental World. Hear this now- don't buy Rent-A-Center stock!

July 3, 2013

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Met a guy from Sudan today. He asked me what church I go to. I told him church wasn't for me. He told me that church was for everyone. We didn't talk about church anymore.

July 3, 2012

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So tired last night, fell asleep with my face in a cat blanket. My face wouldn't stop tickling all day.

July 3, 2011

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I figured out what I don't like about Djokovic- it's his 3rd grade haircut.

July 3, 2011

Postscript- He still has it and I still hate it.

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American History Fun Fact: When we detonated the first atom bomb, some physicists thought it could ignite the entire atmosphere.

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William the Conqueror became the Duke of Normandy on this day in 1035, reigning until 1087. If ancestry.com is to be believed, he is my relative.

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The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg culminated with Pickett's Charge on this day in 1863.

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On this day in 1961, John Cheever wrote in his Journal:

“Hemingway shot himself yesterday morning. There was a great man. I remember walking down a street in Boston after reading a book of his and finding the color of the sky, the faces of strangers and the smell of the city heightened and dramatized. The most important thing he did for me was to legitimize manly courage, a quality that I had heard, until I came on his work, extolled by scout-masters and others who made it seem a fraud. He put down an immense vision of love and friendship, swallows and the sound of rain. There was never, in my time, anyone to compare with him."

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The great Dakota chief, Little Crow, was killed in battle on this day in 1863. 

"We are many, many people and yet we are one. What we do today with our thinking, what we do tomorrow with our thoughts, what we do with our actions and our interactions with people determines the course of the universe itself. You are not powerless. You are not without power."

The Minnesota Historical Society displayed his scalp and skull for decades as a human trophy. They were eventually returned to his grandson for burial.

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Poly Styrene join us on this day in 1957, with Elvis's Teddy Bear ready to hit #1. 

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Tom Cruise was born on this day in 1963.

Christian Bale said he based his American Psycho character on his appearance on David Letterman in 1999- "he had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind his eyes."

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Hetty Green died on this day in 1916. She was unequivocally the most stingy woman in history, even recognized by the Guinness Booke of World Records. The only daughter of a wealthy businessman, her wealth was estimated at more than $2.3 billion. 

-She lived on leftover cakes, broken biscuits, and 2 cent pies.

-She argued to get a free bone for her dog every day!! 

-She sewed her own underpants when she was 16 years old, and did not change them or buy others until the day of her death! (Don't Google the pic.)

-she wore a black dress that she did not change until it was completely worn out

-She never used hot water.

-Her son broke his leg, and she delayed treating it while she looked for free medical care, leading to it being amputated.

-She died of a stroke which resulted from an argument with her maid who had asked for a small a raise.

Her children inherited her fortune and built a free hospital.

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Jim Morrison left us on this day in 1971.

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

I don't know, I actually feel less free when I require myself to face my fears. I kind of prefer singing with my back to the audience, so to speak. Who cares. I don't see anything wrong with it. A different way to face your fears is to not really care that much that you have some.

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Jim "He's Just Loaded, Honey" Backus, left us on this day in 1989.

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I had to go to the bank the other day to get $1,000 in petty cash for work. The teller went to the safe, counted it, brought it back over. 

Then she counted the whole thing again. 

Then she counted each denomination individually and entered into the computer. 

Then she counted it all out for me by denominations, even saying out loud all the hundreds... $870, $875, $880, $885... once stumbling and starting that hundred over again.

At the end of it all, SHE STILL RECOUNTED EACH DENOMINATION FOR HERSELF! 

A double-check, great. A quintuple-check, please quit your job and find some other way to waste everybody's time! 

There were 5 people behind me. I stood, catatonic, my eyes glazed, my brain a block of stone.

I don't think it would have even phased her if after she was done, I stood there and re-counted the whole thing over and over for an hour. To her, this definitely would have made a good bit of sense.

Strange as it sounds, I actually prefer her method to the other teller's. I got her last time. She counted it appropriately, but whispered too intently and quietly, with a big smile, staring right in my eyes! Thinking back on it, there's a tingle going up my spine.

I need to change banks.

July 3, 2022

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Cracked, July 3, 2014- 6 Creepy Brainwashing Techniques You Can Use Today, by Paul K. Pickett

1. Repeating Your Opinion Makes People Believe It, No Matter How Stupid It Is

2. Imitating People Makes Them Give You Things

3. Resist Temptation by Saying "Don't" Instead of "Can't"

4. Performing a Ritual Before Eating Makes Food Taste Better

5. Saying "I'm Excited" Reduces Stress

6. Adding a Reason to Your Request Is a Jedi Mind Trick

http://www.cracked.com/article_21309_6-incredible-ways-you-can-use-words-to-brainwash-people.html

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Well glad I got this whole Democrat nominee sorted out now... that will free up some brain space.

Andrew Yang roundhouse kicking a bottle cap off a bottle:

https://fb.watch/lyQkpTN4J1/

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Some consider this the 75th anniversary of a weather balloon crashing in Roswell, Mexico in 1947. I was there for the 50th anniversary!

Notice the alien bride in the window. What kind of a store was that???

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Sloth's black eye superimposed over mine. Air hockey injury.

July 3, 2009

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Just got home from work and you'll never believe what I found in the backyard, by herself, in the rain.

July 3, 2014

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Bryson Turner started his joke in a stand up routine, "The first time I had sex..." 

A woman from the audience yelled, "Yesterday?"

He let the audience have its laugh and then said, "Glad you remember."

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Tom Waits- "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."

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Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children- "I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come."

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Ambrose Bierce- The Devil's Dictionary- "Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy."

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education- "I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices."

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Jung- "There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."

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Albert Einstein- "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World."

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Addendum

Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte:

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.