The People Who Aren't There, Plus Miscellany

I found a gem in a Little Free Library on my block, H.L. Mencken's On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe, which contains this knockout quote.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

I might be wrong, but maybe 100% of us agree?

July 23, 2024

Zuzu told me that she saw a person in the hallway who wasn't there, that she only saw them for a second. Oh my! I told her it was her shadow but she debunked me. Then I told her that it was my shadow but she debunked that too, adding, "Anyway it couldn't have been your shadow because it had curly shoes!" I played it cool, but since we have munchkin ghosts I guess we have to move now.

July 23, 2020

Postscript- She's often mentioned seeing, "people who aren't there."

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Really think about that... it's happening every day. People dying of Covid begging for the vaccine, but it's too late. The next volume of the Darwin Awards is going to break all previous records. Honorable mentions should go to the chain of unvaccinated people leading to each death. It would be good for them to all know who they are.

July 23, 2021

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TV is too good Sunday nights. In the opening of The Nineties episode on race relations, some anchor from back then asks, "When's the last time you've talked about race with a person of another race, and if the answer is never, we're part of the problem." I love a perfectly framed question that illuminates a truth.

July 23, 2018

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The History of Comedy on CNN is so funny, and the episode tonight on topical humor gave me goosebumps realizing how much I miss John Stewart, and remembering how important his show was. "The best defense against bullshit is vigilance." Maybe he has no time for a show anymore, all of his time might be taken up by vigilance.

July 22, 2017

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Here's what Gretel told me when she woke up: "I had a dream I was pretending to play violin but I was farting. It was a good dream." She watched the Three Stooges before bed, must have somehow been an influence.

July 23, 2017

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Interesting, the Fox News page has links to two of their recent segments- one saying the real crime is investigating the president, and the other one criticizing Trump for investigating the investigators, calling it "banana republic stuff."

But which view does Fox News hold? Do they think the president is above being investigated, and therefore above the law, and therefore infallible? If so, they should say it.

Do they believe that investigating the investigators could only be to undermine the facts of the case? Otherwise the president's team can just rely on rebutting the findings. (Trump seems to know that no rebuttal will be sound.) If that's the case, tell us that too. 

The idea that a news organization can't make a sound judgment without being partisan is nonsense, it's as if they are saying there are no such things as facts.

July 23, 2017

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Today some jerk referred to me as a "David Cross stunt double." Tonight, Gretel randomly found a Mr. Show dvd and said, "This one looks like daddy." She wasn't pointing at Bob.

July 23, 2016

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Most people's last day on Earth is just a few days before their first day in Earth.

July 23, 2016

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The name of the book I just got at the library- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Who wants it next?

July 22, 2012

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Think back to 2004. Would you believe me if I told you that there's not one living cell in your body that was alive then? We're all new!

July 23, 2012

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Sure, I saved two dollars by not renting a baggage cart at the airport, but it would have been really nice to go on vacation without my arm pulled out of the socket.

July 22, 2011

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Strange to think how unnatural it seems to fly on a plane, yet all of its materials came from the earth.

July 23, 2011

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Mentally preparing myself for being a spectacle for the next two weeks... a white, rich, American spectacle.

July 23, 2011

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It's the anniversary of the Solar Storm of 2012, which missed a direct hit of the Earth by nine days. It could have caused up to $2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide. So when is the next one?

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The existentialist masterpiece Barbie, was released on this day in 2023. When you begin to think about death is when you become truly alive.

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Raymond Chandler was born on this day in 1888. From Long Goodbye:

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."

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Directors D. W. Griffith and Robert J. Flaherty, left us on this day in 1948 and 1951 respectively. Where would we be without the cinematic language developed in Birth of a Nation and Nanook of the North? They are the archetypal fiction and nonfiction films, yet both have elements of the other.

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Also on this day, Montgomery Clift left us in 1966, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman joined us a year later, each in the short list of "actors of their generation."

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Marina Sulzberger left us on this day in 1976.

"Where but in Kenya can a man whose grandfather was a cannibal watch a really good game of polo?"

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Candle-burner, Amy Winehouse, joined the 27 Club on this day in 2011

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Other notable birthdays- Woody Harrelson (1961), Slash (1965), Monica Lewinsky (1973)

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Other notable deathdays- Ulysses S. Grant (1885), Eudora Welty (2001), Sally Ride (2012)

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Genius.

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Well someone had to say it, might as well be the Washington Post Editorial Board. It starts with a bang:

DONALD J. TRUMP, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew.

http://washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html

July 23, 2016

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News and Guts, July 23, 2021- If He Believes His Election Lies, Why Isn’t Trump Funding Audits?

Sure, go ahead and send your money to a political evangelist! Why do I get the feeling these are the same people begging for the vaccine as they lay there dying of Covid?

https://www.newsandguts.com/if-he-believes-his-election-lies-why-isnt-trump-funding-audits/

July 23, 2021

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10 Short Rules For a Better Life, From the Stoics

6. Stay a student

You should keep learning... until the end of your life. -Seneca

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Trump is my enemy- for his failure to distance himself from his white supremacist supporters, his bigoted beliefs and comments, his sexist beliefs and comments, his supreme pettiness, his hurt-them-and-I'll-pay-for-your-lawyer remarks, his violent, erratic temperment, his attack on Ted Cruz's wife, his shallowness, his ignorance, his I'll-be-so-presidential-on-day-one nonsense, his apparent lack of any empathy, his monomaniacalism, his Mussolini quotes, his callousness, his business frauds and failures, his sole reliance on platitudes over substantive plans, his I'll-kill-ISIS-and-their-families promise of war crimes, his egotism and narcissism, his lies, his Obama birth certificate nonsense and his double-down and triple-down which now almost seem quaint but illustrate the emptiness of his words, the possibility of his finger on the nuclear launch button, his propagation of fear, his children's big exotic game sport killing, the artificiality of his appearance as a symbol for the artificiality of his character, his voter's who were fooled into supporting Hitler quotes when presented as his quotes, and his ambition...not his ambition to be president, his ambition to do whatever it is he really wants to do as president, which nobody really knows.

July 23, 2016

Postscript- Not to say the writing was in the table or anything, but...

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Hahaha, this guy! Still stewing late into the night last night. I guess we'll just have to take him at his word that he's a "stable genius." Here's a good rule of thumb for everyone- if you ever find yourself bragging about being stable, you might not be stable!

July 23, 2024

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This is without a doubt the strangest picture of Marilyn Monroe that I've ever seen.

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Joe Strummer- “Punk rock isn't something you grow out of. Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth'.”

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Søren Kierkegaard- “People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”

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Woody Allen- "If we humans had two brains, we would certainly be twice as stupid."

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Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited- "Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and interest in facts. Their critical habit of mind makes them resistant to the kind of propaganda that works so well on the majority. Among the masses, instinct is supreme, and from instinct comes faith."

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Lord Byron, The Two Foscari: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

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Bette Davis, The Cabin in the Cotton- "I'd like to kiss you but I just washed my hair. Bye."

https://fb.watch/lYim6_bVF5/?mibextid=NnVzG8

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Thales- "Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing."

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Dillinger- "I rob banks for a living. What do you do?”

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S.E. Hinton, Rumble Fish- "Even the most primitive societies have an innate resepect for the insane."

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Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being- "The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse."

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