Lenny Bruce, Jesus, a Fair Price To Eat a Collie, and Other Miscellany

The genius Lenny Bruce left us on this day in 1966. Much of his material doesn't hold up, but some does!

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."

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I used to think Cruz was more dangerous than Trump because he believed he had an infallible God guiding his decisions. It's now obvious that Trump is no different, except Trump's infallible God... is Trump.

August 3, 2016

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Even Trump supporters have to admit that he doesn't care what anybody thinks of him... which means he doesn't care what his supporters think of him... which means that he has no interest in helping to improve their lives... so through this line of reasoning, assuming they wish to improve their lives, his supporters must admit they've fallen for a con man.

August 3, 2016

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James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time- "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

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If you find out you're two years older than you thought, does that mean you lost two years or gained two years?

August 3, 2012

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I saw a ghost today. Probably my mind playing tricks on me. As I drove past a farm I saw in my periphery what looked like a little farmer kid running out toward traffic. When I looked directly at it he wasn't there. It seemed pretty real... I looked over because I thought he might run out into the traffic. Is that what he did 100 years ago? Or is it time for me to get new glasses that aren't all scratchy?

August 3, 2009

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I taught Gretel the worst lesson today. She asked me why I came home late and guess what I told her- "It just happened."

Just a perfectly terrible all purpose excuse.

August 3, 2023

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One of the all-time great teachers in history was born on this day in 1900- John T. Scopes, of Scopes Monkey Trial fame.

"Education, you know, means broadening, advancing; and if you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one thought, be one individual. I believe in teaching every aspect of every problem or theory."

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Clarence Darrow, during the Scopes Monkey Trial:
“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.”

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Soldier and author, Leon Uris joined us on this day in 1924. From Battle Cry:

Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?"

Bryce: "No."

Huxley: "Seabags Brown does."

Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..."

Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?"

Bryce: "Not much."

Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too."

Bryce: "I don't..."

Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?"

Bryce: "A little."

Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship."

Bryce: "This is most puzzling."

Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?"

Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer."

Huxley: "In the original Greek?"

Bryce: "No"

Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek."

Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?"

Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.

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Martin Sheen was born on this day in 1940. As Kit Carruthers in Badlands, based on Charles Starkweather- "I'll give you a dollar if you eat this collie."

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Flannery O'Connor left us on this day in 1964 at the age 39, after a lupus attack following surgery. 

"It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth."

Every day she would attend Mass, write, and then spend the rest of the day recuperating. She wrote two novels and two dozen short stories while living with lupus. A friend said that she wouldn't have been the writer she was, if it had not been for her illness.

Her short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, should be required reading.

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Other notable deathdays- Carolyn Jones (1983), Ida Lupino (1995)

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Anne Applebaum- "On Thursday evening, this performance seemed deranged, sinister, and frightening. Now, following Biden’s decision to halt his own campaign, it just looks deranged. On the one hand, we have a sitting president who understood his limitations and, in an act of patriotism, selflessness, and party unity, decided to step away from power. On the other hand, we have a former president clinging to power, holding on desperately to the myth of a lost election, evoking the same predictable descriptions of carnage and disaster he served up eight years ago. Today, he is still attacking Biden, who is no longer his opponent."

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Rod Serling- "Hatred is not the norm. Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, and scapegoating — none of these things is the transcendent facet of the human personality. They are the diseases. They are the cancers of the soul. They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have bled humanity over the years. But because they have been and are, is it necessary that they shall be?"

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Socrates- "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." 

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Alexis de Tocqueville- "There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it."

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Gore Vidal- "The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be."

This was my next sentence. And this one followed, apparently. What sentences will tomorrow bring?

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Herman Melville- "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

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Stanley Kubrick- "Cynicism, loss of spiritual values, two world wars, the communist disillusionment, psychoanalysis, have forced the 20th century writer to keep his hero uninvolved, detached, burdened with problems relating to life.... If the modern world could be summed up with a single word, it would be 'absurd.' The only truly creative response to this is the comic version of life."

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