A Chance To Go To Hollywood

Marilyn Monroe left us on this day in 1962. She went to sleep and didn't wake up.

Arthur Miller on Marilyn Monroe’s death, from his autobiography, Timebends: A Life:

"As I was coming to the end of the writing of After the Fall, the horrifying news came that Marilyn had died, apparently of an overdose of sleeping pills. There are people so vivid in life that they seem not to disappear when they die, and for many weeks I found myself having to come about and force myself to encounter the fact that Marilyn had ended. I realized that I still, even then, expected to meet her once more, somewhere, sometime, and maybe talk sensibly about all the foolishness we had been through- in which case I would probably have fallen in love with her again. And the ironic logic of her death did not help much: I could still see her coming across the lawn, or touching something, or laughing, at the same time that I confronted the end of her as one might stand watching the sinking sun."

Luminous!

Edgar Allan Poe- "The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world."

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And more tragedy on this day, in 1944- a tip from a Dutch informer lead the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they found and arrested Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.

"This is a photo as I would wish myself to look all the time. Then I might have a chance to go to Hollywood."

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The bad news is that I broke my toe playing racquetball a month ago. The good news is that I was back in commission tonight, haven't lost a step, and I would beat myself at any age. We have quick and easy solutions to many of life's problems, but I can't imagine a future with a substitute for extreme physical exhaustion through fun exercise.

August 4, 2025

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Mick Mulvaney just said that one he thinks we can all agree on is that crazy people like this should not be allowed to buy guns legally. Meanwhile I hear the hardcore gun enthusiasts saying, "What is it about SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED that you don't understand?!" 

If the right to own guns can't be infringed, then the crazy people get them.

August 4, 2019

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Gretel's most recent masterpiece- "Two Mountains and a Hairy Tongue." Wait, what???

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If a politician's lies or misleading statements are above 50% on PolitiFact, why waste time on them? The burden of proof is now on them to prove they are telling the truth, instead of on anyone else to prove that they're lying. There's no longer any need to determine truth vs untruth for someone who has no regard for the truth. Their words are meaningless.

August 4, 2018

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I've become somewhat obsessed with Donald Trump's mental state, which doesn't say anything good about my own mental state.

August 4, 2016

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I'm watching a documentary on cappuccino. A man in a small cafe in Italy gives Starbucks a billion dollar idea- invent a rival because there are risks to being a monopoly. It's true. What would Coke be without Pepsi? Or Bush without the Terr'ists? Starbucks needs a rival to make it genuinely ubiquitous. (He adds that he hopes they don't take his advice.)

August 4, 2012

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Seems I'm being haunted by ghosts of all my past sports injuries. Does that mean I'm getting old? Bah, nonsense! Today I could beat all of my former selves at the sport of their choice.

August 4, 2011

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Within the span of an hour I witnessed Emma's mere presence cause babies to cry and small children to sing and dance.

August 4, 2011

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I decided during last night's bus ride that I'd update my status to say that I believed I was witnessing my immediate death at least once an hour... and then I realized there might not be any more updates. Friends, it was not a good night to die.

August 4, 2011

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Me in Rwanda in 2011 with a chameleon I found.

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Excellent posts tonight everyone. I'm thoroughly entertained. Give yourselves a pat on the back. I look forward to the same high-caliber posts tomorrow night. Pleasant dreams.

August 4, 2010

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I just found a response to a Craigslist ad from 12 years ago where I was advertising for a driver.

"Hello, I know times a real bad in the job market. But just do you think you are ? Looks like slave labor ! Your nuts, thinking someone in there right mind would even think about your job post !! I will pray for you to have bad luck only. I have a job just for you, on call to kiss my but at will~~ I hope I made your day, ATOZ"

The thing is, they totally made my day! My favorite part is that they're going to pray that I only have bad luck! I think I would go insane if it were not for the fact that life is a celebration of the absurd.

August 4, 2022

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August 4, 1693 is the date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne.

Hitchens- "The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics."

What would I pick? Chopsticks, action movies, spicy food, football. Runner up- trying things that are new.

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On this day in 1892, the father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden were found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home . She was acquitted for the crime a year later.

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On this day in 1933, in Montpelier, Indiana, Dillinger, Harry Copeland and Sam Goldstein robbed the First National Bank of $10,000. That would be about a quarter of a million dollars today.

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The first Zodiac Letter was received by the San Francisco Examiner on this day in 1969.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley joined us on this day in 1792.

"We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell

Of saddest thought."

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Louis Armstrong was born on this day in 1901 in New Orleans, but apparently at some point he learned to pay the trumpet, got married, and took his wife to the Sphinx where he played the trumpet for her.

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Barack Obama, a distant relative of Jefferson Davis, was born on this day in 1961.

"The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope."

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Other notable birthdays- Richard Belzer (1944), Billy Bob Thornton (1955), Roger Clemens (1962), Greta Gerwig (1983)

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Victor Mature left us for the undiscovered country on this day in 1999.

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Headline today- Phillies analyst Ruben Amaro Jr. claims Pete Rose had the “hardest wood I’ve ever touched”

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A Michael Shermer article, The Conspiracy Theory Detector, from Scientific American in 2010

I have a conspiracy theory for you... believers of QAnon have had their brains' capacities for rational thought destroyed by the Deep State, thus causing them to believe any ridiculous thing that anybody says, making them look like clowns to the entire world.

* not mentioned in this article- conspiracy theorists hold an impossibly high standard of truth for the accepted position, and absolutely no standard of truth for their own. They think that by poking the smallest hole in the accepted position proves their own position.

https://michaelshermer.com/2010/12/the-conspiracy-theory-detector/

August 4, 2018

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Remember when Trump couldn't condemn his KKK supporters? Apparently it's equally as hard to condemn Epstein's girlfriend... you know, the sex trafficker! Trump-level gaffes trump Biden a hundredfold, and he REPEATS them even when given an out. They aren't accidents, they are evidence that he's an amoral imbecile.

August 4, 2020

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James Baldwin- "It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

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Got a tetanus shot yesterday. If everything I hear about vaccines is true, it'll probably kill me. Been good to know you...

https://youtu.be/zqiblXFlZuk

August 4, 2021

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For Marilyn M. By Bukowski (written soon after her death)

slipping keenly into bright ashes,

target of vanilla tears

your sure body lit candles for men

on dark nights,

and now your night is darker

than the candle’s reach

and we will forget you, somewhat,

and it is not kind

but real bodies are nearer

and as the worms pant for your bones,

I would so like to tell you

that this happens to bears and elephants

to tyrants and heroes and ants

and frogs,

still, you brought us something,

some type of small victory,

and for this I say: good

and let us grieve no more; 

like a flower dried and thrown away,

we forget, we remember,

we wait. child, child, child,

I raise my drink a full minute

and smile.

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Stanley Kubrick- "Ghost stories appeal to our craving for immortality. If you can be afraid of a ghost, then you have to believe that a ghost may exist. And if a ghost exists, then oblivion might not be the end."

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Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale- "To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal."

To have had Marilyn here to begin with, means that we must endure the loss of her.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley- "Joy, once lost, is pain."

Also...

"The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."

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Addendum

Myspace Blog

August 4, 2008

If you missed kickball today...

... you missed a compound fracture of Sloth's left pointer finger. You know how we sometimes kick the ball really high and catch it during practice time? Well guess what happens one out of every 1000 times you do that. Yep, your finger snaps and slashes its way right through your skin. Too bad for the rest of us that he snapped it right back into place. We didn't get a chance to see how shiny the bone was. If he's to be believed, it was "very" shiny.

For those of you who keep track of things, that makes the second time within a week and a half that one of us broke a finger on our left hand AND had some of our "finger meat" showing. To add to that, we were within ten feet of each other both times.

Some of you might think this was a "sympathy break." I have no opinion on the matter. I'll let you be the judge.