A Smattering of the Important Things In Life, Plus Miscellany

We lost one of the good ones today. Pepper is of the past. 

She really never was much of a dog, more of a cat really. She lived with me four and a half years and maybe barked seven times, each time just one loud bark. Slept all day. Often preferred cat food to dog food. She was always happy to see me though, so that's more than you can say for most cats. (Or at least more than you can say for our cat Razzles, she's blind.) 

One of the few times she barked was when she saw a duck. As if she was going to eat it. That duck flew away but it was in no danger. She would barely even eat her regular food, leaning way in to take the slightest nibble. Her ancestors must have been the zetas of the wolf pack.

She was a modern dog, always wearing sweaters at the forefront of dog fashion. She had better fashion sense than me, perhaps of anybody I've ever met. Her sweaters brought actual joy to people's faces. Who can say that of their own wardrobe? More importantly, her sweaters had the added benefit of keeping her from scratching open her warts. 

She was a good dog, particularly when she was not puking on my lap as I sat at the bank drive-thru. She was particularly good when she sat close to Gretel and Zuzu when they were babies, as if she could protect them with only a quarter of her teeth left in her head. She let them pull her hair, wincing with pain but not trying to leave, figuring it was just part of the deal. 

When I told Gretel that Pepper wasn't going to come home she gasped a bit and said, "Oh no, why?" I told her she became too sick. Without missing a beat she asked, "Can we get a new dog?" Not one for nostalgia I guess. 

She lived with her illness for nearly a year, and she did her best, although I guess a dog is always doing its best, and its worst. A dog is simply doing, and being, and I do believe loving. 

She came to work with me almost every day. I've had to deal with many stressful things, but of course nothing ever bothered her. $8,000 worth of greens froze solid, so what. A driver took the roof off a truck, big deal. You know what she taught me? She taught me to stay calm, nothing is so important that you have to get all worked up. That's a model to follow. 

She was never a friend to other dogs, so there's no pretension that she'll be running around with them on a farm upstate until forever. Nope, she's in the past, a symbol of sorts that you have one chance, and that you had better make the most of what you have.

Her obituary wouldn't be complete without me mentioning that once I swear I saw her moonwalk at the dog park. I don't know how she did it.

So goodbye to my good buddy. She will be missed tremendously, but she'll also always be with me, another of her contradictions. 

Peppercorn Pepperpuss Kreider

2002? - 8-18-17

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Abraham Lincoln- "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."

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Oh goodness, what planet is Federer from? Djokovic will beat him in Grand Slams but nobody can say Djokovic plays beautifully, he's more like a robot that became great at tennis. Watching Federer at his best is a transcendent experience, and I say that without exaggeration.

August 18, 2022

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John McEnroe- "Roger Federer is the most beautiful man to watch play tennis. The most beautiful I've ever seen play. His movement, combined with artistry, the racket, the look, he's got everything going."

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What a victory for the Democrats! The postmaster general is now going to wait until after the election to screw up the post office. Reminds me of the guy who held up the bank, the police came, he said he'd come back to rob it in a few months, and they let him go.

August 18, 2022

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The trees in Buchanan Park are nearly covered more in cicada shells than they are in bark.

August 18, 2022

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So this idiot Cuomo commits political suicide by saying that America was never that great. But is that so different than some loser picking "Make America Great Again" as a campaign slogan? What did he mean by again???

August 18, 2018

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Socrates Memes:

Imagine that person P wakes up one morning to find that he has been attached to person Q through various medical devices. A doctor informs P that Q will die unless P stays attached to Q for about a year. Is it morally permissible for P to detach himself from Q, even though Q will die?

It ended 73% yes, 27% no.

What do you think? I tend to think it's not morally permissible. Great thought experiment. And you can see where it would go from there... What if it was a hundred-year-old person, what if it was your child, what if it was a newborn baby you didn't know, what if it was John Wayne Gacy, what if it was... a fetus?

August 18, 2018

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What's all this about Trump hating women? I thought he hated EVERYONE. (This is premised on the assumption that cartoon characters can feel emotion.)

August 15, 2015

Postscript: 1st Trump post!

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Can we start a Kickstarter campaign or something to get Alex Rodriguez beaned more often?

August 18, 2013

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The bad news is- I tore my ACL and need surgery. The good news is- I get a brand new one from a cadaver. This has me thinking about the Ship of Theseus again. If I replace all my parts, am I still me? (And don't kid yourself about the brain, all those cells get replaced too.)

August 18, 2012

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Going through a box of old stuff I found... Apparently I used to understand these hieroglyphics?

August 18, 2012

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You know someone who really pisses off Emma? Civil War Union General McClellan.

August 18, 2012

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Sixty percent of Americans think the Islamic Community

Center in NYC is a bad idea, so I suppose they’d think a Christian Community

Center in Baghdad or Kabul is an equally bad idea.

August 18, 2010

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Babe Ruth- "If I'd just tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around .600."

I didn't realize that he ended his career with a .342 average! And he was a great pitcher. He has to easily be the best baseball player of all time, like twice as good as Willie Mays.

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When President Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy was asked by a reporter if she had any message for the children of America. She said, "No."

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Epicurus (c.341BC)- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

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Mark Twain- "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

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On this day in 1783, a huge fireball meteor was seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast. I love trying to put myself back in that time and trying to make sense of what I just saw.

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The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on this day in 1920, guaranteeing women's suffrage. Whenever any woman is down on feminism, this comes to mind. Radical feminists fought for the right to vote.

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Meriwether Lewis join us on this day on 1774.

"We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod. The good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life."

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Today is Shelley Winters' birthday, born in 1920. I loves her on Lolita, one of the best all-time performances. Incidentally, Lolita was first published on this day in 1958.

Charlotte Haze : [to Humbert] You must see the garden before you go, you must. My flowers win prizes around here. They're the talk of the neighborhood. Voila! My yellow roses, my - my daughter.

[to Lolita sunbathing in the garden, listening to the radio] 

Charlotte Haze : Darling, turn that down please.

[to Humbert] 

Charlotte Haze : I can offer you a comfortable home, a sunny garden, a congenial atmosphere - my cherry pies.

Humbert Humbert : You're a very persuasive saleswoman.

Charlotte Haze : Thank you. What was the decisive factor? My garden?

Humbert Humbert : I think it was your - cherry pies.

She was great in Night of the Hunter and A Place In the Sun too. What is it about her that makes people want to see her die in the middle of a movie?

https://cassavafilms.com/list-of-9/nine-movies-in-which-shelley-winters-dies-in-the-middle

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Mason Family near-victim, Roman Polanski, was born on this day in 1933, and a year to the day later Manson Family prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, was born.

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Roberto Clemente joined us on this day in 1934.

"Why does everyone talk about the past? All that counts is tomorrow's game."

Vin Scully said Clemente could field a ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pennsylvania.

He's the only player to ever hit an inside-the-park walk-off grand slam.

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Robert Redford joined us on this day in 1936. He was good friends with Paul Newman and they used to bust each other's balls, to keep each other grounded. They played pranks on each other too. For his 50th birthday, Redford gave Newman an old beat up shell of a Porsche. He had it delivered to his porch. Newman had it melted down and delivered it to Redford's living room. Redford had a friend of his turn it into a sculpture and dump it in Newman's garden, and there it remained. Neither of them ever spoke about it to each other.

If the internet is to be believed, this is his father holding him as a baby. 

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Trail-blazing comedian, Elayne Boosler, was born on this day in 1952. She was part of the stand-up scene in New York City in the late seventies. That's a time travel destination for me. 

"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three."

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Edward Norton joined us on this day in 1969. His performance in Primal Fear blew me away. For the first half I thought he was the shittiest actor on Earth, he was so regular, but of course that was the point.

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B. F. Skinner left us on this day in 1990.

"The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about."

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The Onion- Fireflies Almost Salvage Man's Shitty Day

TOLEDO, OH—According to reports, the intermittent flicker of fireflies above Charles Michaelson’s front porch Friday evening came close, but ultimately fell just short of salvaging his shitty day. “Oh, look, fireflies,” said Michaelson as he stared at the silently blinking green-yellow lights, briefly forgetting about his mishandling of a work project, gridlocked commute, and the doctor’s bill that was waiting in his mailbox. “That’s nice. I didn’t realize that they would still be out at this time of year.” At press time, Michaelson reportedly turned to look at the glowing insects a second time before realizing that, ultimately, fireflies do not solve anything.

http://bit.ly/1oUKfDl

August 18, 2014

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New York Times- Profiles In Science- She Fell Nearly Two Miles and Walked Away

Oh my goodness, what a story! As I'm reading it, I'm wondering why it was never made into a documentary, and then I get to the part about Werner Herzog actually making a documentary about her! Somehow I've never seen it. And he was supposed to be on the same plane! I can barely believe what I just read. It's like a superhero origin story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/science/koepcke-diller-panguana-amazon-crash.html

August 18, 2021

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The Creepiest Things Kids Have Ever Said To Their Parents

My 3-year-old son was softly singing while he was coloring. I stopped to listen, but I had never heard the song before. I asked where he learned it, and he said: “The lady in my bedroom sang it to me.”

And another...

When I was about 4, my mom found me in the bathroom with all my Barbies, making them float facedown in the bath. When she asked what I was doing, I replied: “The man in the wardrobe told me if I didn’t do it, it would be my turn to swim facedown.”

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Christopher Hitchens- "I can’t alter the fact that I’m a primate. I can conceal it better than some people can."

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Anthony Bourdain- "I used to think that basically, the whole world, that all humanity were basically bastards. I've since found that most people seem to be pretty nice - basically good people doing the best they can."

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Steve Martin- "A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."

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William Blake:

Every Night and every Morn

Some to Misery are born.

Every Morn and every Night

Some are born to Sweet Delight,

Some are born to Endless Night.

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William Goldman, The Princess Bride- "I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids."

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Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year:

Dogs lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price.

Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and the mistakes we make because of those illusions. 

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Milan Kundera- "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace."