Stillborn Kittens Died For Our Sins, and More of Gods Plans

Nothing to see here... just the daily thing that would have been the end of any other politician's career. (Btw, I was counting down the days until he would start this line of attack. It was inevitable.) This guy is stuck in a second grade level of morality, there's probably still chewed gum under the resolute desk. 

But beyond that, don't ever look how supremely stupid this man is, and how poor his judgment is. Battleground states are one or lost in the suburbs. Does he think this kind of crap is going to appeal to them?

He simultaneously pushes swing voters away and gives his loyal followers every reason to flip, effectively daring them to flip, all the while saying it's "not possible" for Harris to win. It's exactly as his ex-Chief of Staff, General Kelly said... he's the most flawed person he's ever met.

The Hill- Trump Continues Personal Attacks on Harris, "I'm a Better Looking Person"

August 17, 2024

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Crazy baseball stat: On this day in 1957, Richie Ashburn hit a foul ball down the third base line that hit Alice Roth right in the nose. As they were taking her out on a stretcher, he hit another foul ball that hit her in the leg! Richie visited her in the hospital and then sent her Christmas cards for the next 30 years until she passed away.

I just found out the craziest baseball stat the other day. There have been just over 300 no hitters in the history of baseball when Michael Lorenzen pitched his for the Phillies the other night. There have only been three other pitchers to come from Lorenzen's high school, and the three others also pitched no-hittersh Walter Johnson in 1920, Steve Busby in 1973 and 1974, Mike Warren in 1983, and now Lorenzen in 2023!

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I'm watching the Democratic Convention and flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox. I think I flipped to Fox ten times and didn't hear one word of it... they show the picture but no sound, with their commentators talking instead. They want to present the image that they're covering it, and I assume many of their viewers will feel like they watched it. You might expect that, but check MSNBC during the Republican Convention and they'll actually show the speeches, or at least the major ones.

August 17, 2020

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I'll give credit where credit is due. He's the greatest con artist of all time.

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Onion headline- Nabisco Snack Physicists Develop Highly Unstable Quadriscuits

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I just ran into a couple guys who are all bummed out about this canceled Phish concert. I almost said, but just barely caught myself- "Look at the bright side, at least you don't have to hear their awful music!"

August 17, 2017

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Sure, both sides deserve a certain percentage of blame. The side opposing the Nazis deserves as much blame as we do for entering WWII, which is to say zero percent.

August 17, 2017

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I can't figure out why the Clinton conspiracy theorists who are also pro-Trump don't subscribe to the theory that Trump is running in cahoots with Clinton as the worst candidate ever to ensure she wins.

August 17, 2016

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Should I drink some wine tonight, or take my pain medication?

August 17, 2013

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I'm assuming that at some point there's a limit.

August 17, 2015

Postscript- The limit was 14 more days.

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On this day in ducks vs rabbits: In 1560, the Catholic Church is overthrown and Protestantism is established as the national religion in Scotland.

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Animal Farm by George Orwell was first published on this day in 1945, just a few months after the end of WWII.

"Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments."

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On this day in 1998, Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; later that same day admitting before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship.

Not to excuse his terrible behavior, but this was back when presidents would admit when they lied, holding the truth in some regard. Trump learned an important lesson from this- never admit fault.

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Mae West was born on this day in 1893.

"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!

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Valley Girl director, Martha Coolidge, was born on this day in 1946. Here she is talking about the film:

Well, the irony about teen films is, though this is a youth oriented business, the filmmakers are never really teens so we are never really of that generation - if the film is contemporary. But I was uniquely prepared. I had just spent several years in the Rock n Roll clubs of Hollywood, New York and San Francisco while working on my film for Zoetrope so I really knew the new music scene. I knew the un-hip image the Valley had for both Hollywood dudes and movie people. When I was given the script by my friend, writer/producer Andrew Lane, I was pleased to see how instantaneously I "got" what the Hollywood "tribe" would be like, the dichotomy between them and the hippy parents and the label crazed Valley Girls. I also understood that the story was a funny take off on Romeo and Juliet. I helped Andy and Wayne [Crawford] craft the final script into a tight love story about romance, peer pressure and conformity vs. individuality.

I had always believed that our teenage years are the most dramatic (operatic) in our lives, so the drama was easy for me to understand. As for the "Val speak," I didn't know it (or surf jargon from whence it came) but I knew to research what was real. The cast and I went to visit, hang out and even work in Valley high schools and we did find out what was real and what was fabricated - like Moon Zappa's elaboration "gag me with a spoon." The real phrase is simply "gag me." So we never used the phrase from her song. I hired Sean Frye, a teenaged son of a movie Costume Designer, to create the punk Hollywood look - which was therefore authentic at the same time as original. All the music was from the scene I had gotten to know so well. I selected each song along with my great music supervisor, Michael Papale.

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The effervescent Belinda Carlisle was born on this day in 1958, one day after Madonna.

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Sean Penn was born on this day in 1960. I heard him say that once you have $10 million dollars you couldn't possibly need more. It ensures a huge house, anything you want to eat, vacations, and basically everything you'd want to buy.

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Skateboarding-monk-of-sorts, Rodney Mullen, was born on this day in 1966. I don't know if there's anybody anywhere who does anything day in and day out more passionately. Or is it neurotically?

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Phoebe Bridgers was born on this day 1994. She's this real punker who asked her guitar manufacturer if she could smash it after she sung a song, and they let her, so she did, and then auctioned it off. So-called art, purely for the sake of commerce, is not art at all. In fact, it's garbage.

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The oldest joke we know of, found on a Sumerian tablet as a proverb, in 1900 BC: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's embrace."

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The Forer Effect- memorize this and tell people it's the result of a personality test and it will seem like you are a genius. 

"You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic."

August 17, 2013

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The Onion- God Announces Plans To Slowly Wean Humans Off Religion

THE HEAVENS—Saying that the various belief systems had a “good run” over the last few millennia but that it was probably time for humans to get by on their own, the Lord Our God, He Who Is Seen And Unseen, proclaimed Monday that He would begin slowly weaning humanity off religion. “Religion was definitely helpful for humans when they first started out, but now it seems like it’s pretty much served its purpose—time to take the training wheels off,” said God, who argued that while the transition from religion might be difficult for a large segment of the population, ultimately humankind would be better off without it in the long run. “It’s not like I’m going to get rid of religion all in one go or anything; I’ll wind it down gradually over the next 500 years or so. Really, when you take a good look at it, the negatives are starting to outweigh the positives anyway.” At press time, God was implementing the first stage of His plan by effecting the opposite outcome of every prayer He received.

http://onion.com/1IWH4IC

August 17, 2015

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Gary Gulman- How the States Got Their Abbreviations. The best joke ever?

https://youtu.be/dLECCmKnrys

August 17, 2018

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Giuliani believes that Trump is honest because facts are in the eye of the beholder. Is that so? If facts are in the eye of the beholder, then honesty has no meaning. Giuliani gets it, he's just a toady. This is the guy who took down the mafia in New York city.

August 17, 2018

Postscript- And as it turns out, he's being prosecuted in Georgia along with Trump, for racketeering.

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Taking a poll... should I let my kids watch Jaws??? They are 7 and nearly 6. Zuzu said that a friend at camp watched Chucky and it was "very relaxing."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/parenting/children-scary-movies.html

August 17, 2021

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Babe Ruth- "(Ty) Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit."

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50 Of The Creepiest Things Kids Have Ever Said To Their Parents

We were driving down a dark, snowy highway late one evening - final stretch of a 16- hour-long road trip. My son, who was around 4 or 5 at the time, was in the back seat and becoming a bit restless. He suddenly covered his face with a blanket and announced loudly, "I don't want to get glass on my face!" A few moments later, a pick-up truck towing some snowmobiles pulled out in front of a tractor trailer a few cars in front of us and got hit, spinning out into the median. Fortunately, we avoided.

And another...

When I was about 3 we had a cat that had still born kittens. I asked my father if we could make crosses for them, which he did. As he was making them I asked: "Aren't those too small?"

Dad: "What do you mean?"

Me: "Aren't we going to nail them to them?"

Dad: (after several moments silence) "We're not going to do that."

Me: "Oh."

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IFL Science- When You Smell Poop, Is That Because Poop Particles Have Gone Up Your Nose?

"While some experiments require the Large Hadron Collider to smash particles together at 99.9999991 percent the speed of light, others can be conducted by taking off your pants and farting directly into a Petri dish."

https://www.iflscience.com/when-you-smell-poop-is-that-because-poop-particles-have-gone-up-your-nose-65611

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Great stories!

Ranker- People Describe Creepy Things They've Seen That They Cannot Rationally Explain

https://www.ranker.com/list/people-describe-creepy-things-theyve-seen-that-they-cannot-rationally-explain/christopher-shultz

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Psyche- Philosophical reflection often begins with a disruptive mood:

There is a pattern in the history of philosophy that allows us to identify moods as the trigger that calls for and sustains philosophical reflection. Although not every philosopher is inspired by a disruptive mood, many of them are. Plato’s Socrates speaks about himself as being perplexed and lost. Michel de Montaigne writes about the melancholia, deepened by the death of a dear friend, through which he came to philosophy. René Descartes’s methodological doubt emerged out of a sense of insecurity experienced in the disruption of his Catholic taken-for-granted beliefs. Karl Marx’s politics meant he was alienated from conventional ways of being-in-the-world. Søren Kierkegaard’s anxiety led him into the world of philosophical reflection (‘all existence makes me anxious,’ he once wrote). Friedrich Nietzsche writes of the relationship between his emotional pain and his philosophy. While Martin Heidegger does not write of his own anxiety, much of his thinking arose in response to a disillusionment with technology and modernity. Max Weber experienced the depression of a disenchanted world.

Different moods disclose and frame the world in different ways. In the mood of perplexity, Socrates becomes attuned to an understanding of virtue, while Plato sees wonder as the horizon of metaphysical thinking; wonder, for Aristotle, is the basis of enquiry into what is. In a mood of disenchantment, the Romantics launch their great project of re-enchanting the world, and the Marxists take alienation and estrangement to be the revolutionary basis for the liberation of workers from the capitalist class. Kierkegaard understands his own profound anxiety as the trigger for moving beyond the finite to the world of possibility. Nietzsche shows us that the anguish of nihilism leads to the re-evaluation of all values, while Heidegger finds a different lesson in anxiety, taking us beyond the ‘average everyday’ ways of being to an ‘authentic’ attunement to being. In general, existential philosophers see the mood of the anxiety of meaninglessness as throwing us into the scary and exciting question of meaning."

https://psyche.co/ideas/philosophical-reflection-often-begins-with-a-disruptive-mood

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Grandpa Simpson- "We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."

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Elizabeth Taylor- "The Vatican newspaper has come out with an item saying I was a despicable woman, that my own children should be taken away from me, an attack that, well, made me want to vomit. The day after that, somebody was out at the studio trying to blow me up with the bomb, so the Italian FBI were out there for 5 days, and it was really a horrendous week." (Laughter.)

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Dorothy Parker:

The Flaw In Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,

 Love, the reeling midnight through,

For tomorrow we shall die!

 (But, alas, we never do.)

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John Kruk, on playing in front of hostile Philadelphia crowds- "If you don't want to get booed, don't suck."

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Fran Lebowitz- "I was really looking forward to my first day at kindergarten. I was only five. The day ended with me sitting in the corner with a Band-Aid over my mouth and holding up a sign saying: “I am a chatterbox.” Now I get paid for what I was punished for."

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Noam Chomsky- “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

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William Goldman, The Princess Bride- "The enemy is always in the mind."

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William Blake- "In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors."

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Steve Martin- "Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way."