Excursions In Nothing-Newness

Roman playwright Terence (185-159BC)- "Nothing is said that has not been said before."

...

For some reason or another I'm listening to Flea's autobiography. He said that when he was 10 he read Hunter S. Thompson's Hells Angels... all books in the house were fair game for him to read. Imagine how that would change your life, reading Hells Angels at 10! 

He said that no illicit art never harmed him except for the Exorcist. He saw it before he was a teenager and it scared the crap out of him. There was a lady who sat beside him in the theater and when he got really scared she put a jacket over him and he was really thankful for it. After he met Anthony Kiedis and they became best friends, guess what... he said the same thing happened to him at the same theater! That lady made it her mission to go see The Exorcist again and again, sit next to kids, and try to save them from the Devil!

Funny thing is... just as I got done writing that I realized Emma was teaching Gretel and Zuzu the Nightmare on Elm Street song as they were going to bed, "One, two, Freddy's coming for you..."

I guess they'll turn out fine.

September 1, 2021

...

I'm not racist or anything, but I do enjoy it when Dave Chappelle refers to "the whites."

September 1, 2019

...

I see so many apologists for the president excusing his flagpole flip-flop and other McCain funeral nonsense by some version of "I respect him for not being artificial." They should say what the really think- "Sure, Trump's an asshole, but I respect him for being a very genuine asshole who has no hesitation disrespecting the recently departed and their families, and anyway it doesn't matter because the economy is doing great!"

September 1, 2018

...

From Joseph Campbell' Power of Myth:

"Myth and the Modern World

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

...

...

All these right wing groups are decrying "anti-Trump rants" during the funerals of Aretha Franklin and John McCain. I don't know... to me they sounded more to me like general principals most everybody agrees on. Who is not against bigotry? Who is not against autocratic leaders? Make America great again? What do you mean again??? And it's not like there wasn't some pro-Trump stuff peppered in. At least I'm assuming that's why that bishop grabbed Ariana Grande's boob.

September 1, 2018

...

Don't you miss gaffes? Gaffes seem so quaint now... when someone UNINTENTIONALLY said something idiotic. Yes, I'm talking about the president who apparently actually believes and wants others to believe that Democrats what to cut Medicare to pay for socialism.

September 1, 2018

...

Emma, with our new baby- Zuzu Ekaterina Mendive Kreider.

September 1, 2015

...

Full disclosure: I bought a box of Frute Brute today.

September 1, 2013

...

"Scientists simulated the conditions present at the start of our universe." I don't know, Science... sounds like you might be coming pretty close to wiping us out faster than we can even scream out in terror.

September 1, 2013

...

Nectarine Sorbet

I cut up 10 nectarines, cooked them in some water for 10 minutes, added sugar, added a little lime juice, blended them up, added a bit more sugar, and blended them some more. Then some broken pieces of plastic accidentally got added and blended up. I dumped the whole thing down the drain.

September 1, 2011

...

Sam Harris to Christopher Hitchens on the value of church:

“You raise this issue though, of whether or not we would wish the churches emptied on Sundays. And I think you were uncertain whether you would, and I think I would agree. I would want a different church. I would want a different ritual, motivated by different ideas. But I think there's a place for the sacred in our lives, but under some construal that doesn't presuppose any bullshit. There's a usefulness to seeking profundity as a matter of our attention and our neglect of this area I think, as atheists, at times makes even our craziest opponents seem wiser than we are.”

...

The Tokyo earthquake of 1923 happened on this day. Here is Akira Kurosawa describing the experience.

“Corpses piled on bridges, corpses blocking off a whole street at the intersection, corpses displaying every manner of death possible to human beings. When I involuntarily looked away, my brother scolded me, “Akira, look carefully now.” When that night I asked my brother why he made me look at those terrible sights, he replied: “If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.”

https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/kurosawa-on-earthquakes/

...

Forget about Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil for a minute, without them Orson Welles could still be remembered for his contribution to the documentary genre with F For Fake. Great film! It was released on this date in 1974.

Orson Welles, F For Fake- “Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. 'Be of good heart,' cry the dead artists out of the living past. 'Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.' Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.”

...

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was born on this day in 1896. He founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

"Our only business is to love God, not to ask God for our necessities."

...

Florence Thompson was born on this day in 1903. She became known as Migrant Mother, from Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph, the face of the Great Depression. Forty-three years later in 1979 she was photographed again with her daughters, apparently middle class at that point, in a suburban backyard. Quite a difference a few decades make, along with the will, spirit and opportunity to improve your life, and quite a juxtaposition of images.

...

Yvonne De Carlo was born on this day in 1922. Today would be her 100th birthday.

September 1, 2022

...

Conway Twitty was born on this day in 1933. He had 55 number one country singles, but the first one was the best.

IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE

People see us everywhere

They think you really care

But myself I can't deceive

I know it's only make believe

My one and only prayer

Is that some day you'll care

My hopes and my dreams come true

My one and only you

No-one will ever know

How much I love you so

My only prayer will be

That some day you'll care for me

But it's only make believe

My hopes and my dreams come true

My life, I'd give for you

My heart, a wedding ring

My all, my everything

My heart I can't control

You rule my very soul

My only prayer will be

Is some day you'll care for me

But it's only make believe

My one and only prayer

Is that some day you'll care

My hopes and my dreams come true

My one and only you

No-one will ever know

How much I love you so

My prayers, my hopes and my schemes

You are my every dream

But it's only make believe

(Make believe)

https://youtu.be/LJefPaBsSug

...

Teenage massage enthusiast, Alan Dershowitz, was born on this day in 1938.

...

Tennessee Williams on Lily Tomlin, who was born on this day in 1939. 

"Lily Tomlin is, I believe, a great artist. I find that her work succeeds on every level: She is a great actress; she is a brilliant comedienne; she is a coruscating commentator on our times and on her place in the world; she is frighteningly clear in her ability to see and to share what entered her mind and her heart; she is amazingly generous with her material. The final point is one that you will not understand until you begin to create your own work, and you will know the brutal difference between those who give a great deal and those who give according to fashion and whim. Trust me when I tell you this is a brutal point."

...

Garry Maddox was born on this day in 1949, center fielder of the 1980 World Champion Phillies. He won 8 consecutive gold gloves, from 1975 to 1982.

Ray Didinger- "Two thirds of the Earth are covered by water. The other one third by Garry Maddox."

Harry Kalas- "Garry Maddox has turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed."

He served in Vietnam, and developed a skin condition that made it painful to shave, this, his beard.

Somehow he was the Giants' replacement for Willie Mays. 

...

We lost Barbara Ehrenreich today, the author of Nickel and Dimed, and Bright-Sided. Two must-reads. From Bright-Sided:

"I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone — better jobs, health care, and so forth — there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met — in my utopia, anyway — life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking."

September 1, 2022

...

CNN, September 1, 2020- US won't join global coronavirus vaccine effort led by WHO

Is anybody ready for the return of basic competence?

If Trump had been impeached, Pence never would have dreamed of demonizing the WHO, and we'd be working together with... you know, THE WORLD... to solve this problem.

https://cnn.it/34PPO6m

September 1, 2020

..

Huffington Post, September 1, 2020- Trump’s Latest Excuse: COVID-19 Only Counts When It Kills The Perfectly Healthy

Huxley- "Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing."

We're working on it though!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-cdc-covid-preexisting-conditions_n_5f4d9514c5b64f17e141b716

September 1, 2020

...

From Roger Ebert's Blog- 100 Greatest Moments from the Movies

The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination: Over and over again, a moment frozen in time.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg wading in the fountain in "La Dolce Vita."

Marlon Brando's screaming "Stella!" in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

...

Lily Tomlin- “Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”

...

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States- "What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children."

He never seems to quite account for the Nazis.

...

Stephen Fry- "Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else."

...

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's - "Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travellin' through the pastures of the sky."

...

William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America- "Education is thinking, and thinking is looking for yourself and seeing what’s there, not what you got told was there."

...

Goethe- "Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."

...

John Mulaney- "Late at night, on the street, women will see me as a threat. That is funny, yeah! It’s kind of flattering in its own way, but at the same time, it’s weird because, like, I’m still afraid of being kidnapped."

...

Mary Shelley- "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

...

William James- "A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks."

...

There was a young fellow named Brewster

Who said to his wife as he goosed her, 

"It used to be grand

But just look at my hand; 

You ain't wiping as clean as you used to."

Addendum

Part 1

William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life:

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

...

Part 2

H.P. Lovecraft:

As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.