Varieties of Epiphany

Lot of fish jumping at the beach today, even some big ones. Put me in mind of Paul Holland's take on jumping fish from I Walked With a Zombie. Paul Holland and Besty Connell, the husband of a sick woman and her soon-to-be nurse, are on a boat looking at the water. 

Paul Holland : It's not beautiful.

Betsy Connell : You read my thoughts, Mr. Holland.

Paul Holland : It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay.

Betsy Connell : You can't really believe that.

Paul Holland : Everything good dies here. Even the stars.

https://youtu.be/L8PUsose3kE

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A Random Smattering of Thoughts on Trump's Second Assassination Attempt

Wait, did I just write that? Could have this actually happened again??? Apparently so.

Before anything else, once again, unfortunately it needs to be pointed out that political violence needs to be off limits, always. The only way to beat your enemies is at the ballot box, obviously. 

We can't wish our opponents dead, like Trump did in 2016, when he said that if he lost, "Second Amendment people" could act against Hillary.

We can't wish our opponents harmed, like Trump did when he entertained his rally-goers with jokes about Nancy Pelosi's husband getting attacked with a hammer in his own home.

We can't wish for an insurrection like Trump did, where Capitol police were injured and killed as they were fighting to protect the integrity of the last election. If you're the type who pays attention to the news, you might remember Trump sitting back, silently, for hours, watching his plan unfold while everybody in his orbit with any ounce of credibility was telling him to do something to stop it. Trump silent? Believe it, silent with a purpose, intentionally silent.

Years later when asked about the crowd wanting to kill his vice-president, Trump suggested that maybe he deserved it. So once again, we can't wish our political opponents dead, even if they are our own vice president.

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It's legal, but irresponsible, to post something wondering why there haven't been any assassination attempts on Harris, like Elon Musk did, under his coy "I'm just asking questions" guise. Ooooohhh, he's such a bad little boy, free-speeching right in our faces, planting seeds to 200 million followers. They say that one in 100 of us qualify as psychopaths. This guy has a security clearance?

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Heather Cox Richardson pointed out that as a result of Trump overturning Roe v Wade, several women have died of sepsis because they couldn't get the care they needed. You can be the judge as to whether that is a form of violence against women.

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Two back-to-back assassination attempts on Trump, that must be unprecedented, right? What possible reason would there be for two? As always, I might be wrong, but hear me out... he didn't deserve them, but maybe they were partially due to him being too stupid and entitled. They are 100% the responsibility of the ones who attempted them, but I think Trump is helping to make it easier.

There are endless examples of him working against his own best interest. I remember the time during the 2020 election that he put all this ad money into targeting senior citizens, and at the same time started making fun of Biden for having dementia. (Remember, this was back at a time that Biden simply seemed more regular-old.) 

That was the first one that came to mind, but why bother going back years? He does stupid things like that every day, like questioning Kamala's blackness in front of a group of black reporters. Or taking every scrap of Kamala's bait during the debate. Or after being infuriated by Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala, he made a point five days later to give her fans MORE motivation to vote when he posted, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!" He works against his own best interest at every turn. 

(Man, that Taylor Swift thing is still so funny! It's as funny as he was mad! My 10-year-old daughter said that he was acting like a 2-year-old. My 8-year-old daughter said that he was acting like a 10-year-old boy.)

I can absolutely see the Secret Service warning him to not have so many outdoor rallies since he only had a curtailed Secret Service detail, which is the way it is when you are only a nominee and not the president. I can totally see them warning him to not play golf in West Palm Beach which is surrounded by public roads and perfect places to hide, and him responding something like, "I'm doing it, and it's your job to protect me, so do your job!" And of course they're forbidden to go public with this type of thing. It was an impromptu golf outing, so the Secret Service had zero time to prepare. This puts me in mind of a Bill Maher's recurring segment, "I Don't Know It For a Fact, I Just Know It's True."

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Okay, so it's not unprecedented. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts within 15 days.

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I know it's just Trump being Trump, but I can't get over how weird it is that he fundraised in his post telling everybody he was okay. I mean, of course he would, but somehow even his own near death isn't a cause for a smidgen of solemnity.

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Both Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh had apparent mental illness and access to guns. Seems odd somehow.

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Btw, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray... whoever decreed that after assassinations, or assassination attempts, that the perpetrators are there by forever known by their first, middle, and last names? 

I know, I know, Sirhan Sirhan.

There's always a counterexample.

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Last time everybody was mad that the Secret Service didn't catch the shooter before he fired. And now they're mad at the Secret Service for this happening again, but they caught him before he fired. What do these people want, for potential assassins to be caught prior to prior to them shooting?

The guy is being held because as a felon he was not allowed to own a gun, and he scratched out the serial numbers. Kind of weird, he didn't shoot at him, so if he WAS allowed to have a gun, and DIDN'T scratch out the serial numbers, where did he break the law? In that case, what would they charge him for? If you were his lawyer, wouldn't you argue that he was just proving to himself that he could have killed him if he had chose to, or something like that? 

At what point is it an assassination attempt? If waiting in some bushes for a chance to shoot counts as an assassination attempt, what about when he parked and was walking towards his spot, or sitting at his kitchen table working out the plans, or was it assassination attempt when he just thought of it? Of course he's guilty, but how exactly is he guilty?

We can't KNOW for certain what's inside someone's brain. All we can do is make inferences based on behavior. Despite Routh's inaction, his behavior and all the details tell the story. Trump's behavior and all the details leading up to and including January 6th, and in particular his inaction during this critical few hours on January 6th, also tells the story. Inaction can still be incriminating.

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I clicked on some article about it and a lot of the comments were some variety of, "It's a fact of life now, we have to get over it." I thought that was a pretty rough thing to say, even for a jerk like Trump. Then I realized the ironic sense to what they were saying. There was a school shooting in Iowa in January and Trump said we have to "get over it", and there was a school shooting in Georgia earlier this month and JD Vance said that school shootings are "a fact of life now." In both cases, they are asking us to accept it and move on... again, in the only country in the world where this happens regularly.

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JD Vance is back at it of course, suggesting that criticism of the president is what caused this assassination attempt, the same as the first. Crooks was an apolitical nihilist who was snubbed for the rifle team and wanted to go out making an impression. As close as I can tell, Routh was disappointed in Trump over the Ukraine War. Well I am too, but that doesn't mean I want the guy to be murdered. 

Vance and others keep saying some version of this- criticizing Trump for his aspirations of becoming a dictator, and a threat to democracy, is what is causing the violence, so we must stop criticizing him. Strange, that all dictators, perhaps above all else, make it a number one priority to eradicate all criticism of them. It's a strange irony, isn't it? In this country you can't call for violence, but you can criticize. The same as Trump and Vance can criticize Kamala, they can be criticized as well.

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One other thing, the God aspect. Was it really a miracle? I mean, was it really? Did God really have to be involved, or is it possible he was just lucky? And if God was involved, then in the first attack, why didn't He stop the guy standing behind Trump from getting killed? And why didn't He just give both assassins appendicitis on the day they attempted to kill him? Why didn't he just never have their parents meet?

I don't know, maybe there's no answer to these questions. Then again, maybe the answer is very, very simple. (Spoiler alert- sometimes things just happen.)

September 17, 2024

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Eight-plus minutes of the most beautiful tennis the world has ever seen.

https://fb.watch/n6_B1fp4sg

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This is as excited I get for a movie- Ken Burns 10-part, 18-hour documentary on Vietnam starts tonight. The Civil War and Baseball are each in my top 10, and rarely a year goes by that I don't rewatch one of them. But they are all great- The West, Mark Twain, Horatio's Drive, The Dust Bowl, Jackie Robinson, etc. He's been working on it 10 years and I've been waiting for it for like 20 years. I have lots of beliefs on Vietnam but I will go into it as a blank slate.

September 17, 2017

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Wow! Did you hear? Hillary started that whole Obama birth certificate thing and Trump ended it. A few more things you didn't know about Trump:

-Gravitational force of his ego causes the tides.

-Proportion of lies he tells prove that he knows the truth, if they were randomly dispersed it would be 50/50.

-Favorite philosopher: Mr. Monopoly.

-He's so racist, he turned himself orange in an effort to belong to no race.

-He's so classist, his goal is to have zero class.

-Least favorite line from a Bob Dylan song- "Even the president of the United States sometimes has to stand naked."

-First human being to somehow have 100% id, 100% ego, AND 100% superego.

-He put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp.

-Evolutionary anomaly: shares 0% of his DNA with an orangutan, but shares 100% with primordial ooze.

-Would rather have sex with Ed Gein's lamp than Ann Coulter.

-But would really like to have sex with Ann Coulter.

-Near total, all-encompassing sexual obsession with Ed Gein's lamp.

-Saving the worst for when he loses. Or wins.

-Favorite use of the first amendment- suggesting that Hillary Clinton should be killed, without actually putting it in those words.

-Favorite line from a Bob Dylan song: "Easy to see without looking to far that not much is really sacred."

-Wild appearance meant to divert attention from the monster beneath.

-Born on the day Ayn Rand wrote the last line to The Fountainhead, causing some to wonder if somehow the book came to life.

-Knows that if you repeat something enough it becomes true.

-He cares more about you than money... haha, no, that one's a joke!

September 17, 2016

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Curious to learn the age at which a person knows that a dog wearing a sweater looks ridiculous? Ten months. The answer is ten months.

September 17, 2014

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The Phils are off to the playoffs (after a few weeks of hanging out.) I'm excited for baseball to make me nervous again.

September 17, 2011

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Ruined a perfectly good cup of coffee with an insane coffee creamer recipe- cream, vanilla extract and sugar. Coffee-Mate, let's never quarrel again.

September 17, 2011

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I'm thinking of creating a social network where people post the status updates and links they are afraid to post on facebook. Since I don't know anything about programming can one of you make it and give me all the money?

September 16, 2011

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Somewhere around 1999.

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Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery on this day in 1847. So if you're having a rough day, reflect on that.

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George B. McClellan halted the northward drive of Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history. Emma does not like him one but.
1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge, who becomes the first airplane fatality.

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The Swiss bishop, Hans Herr, was born on this day in 1639. He's my oldest settler in the New World. Along with a group of others, he petitioned William Penn for some land on the western frontier of Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County. They were the first Mennonites, escaping religious persecution in Swiss-Germany. Legend has it that after they came here, they wanted to send a representative back to let everybody know they should follow. They picked Hans because he was so respected in the community, and at 70 years old, he made the trip there and back. Supposed he's related to a third of the county's current half million residents. He's my 9x great-grandfather, and I'm related to him ten or more different ways. Thankfully, when they came here, they weren't replacing Native Americans. The Susquehannock Indiana had already largely died out. A small band of Conestoga Indians were the only ones left in the county, and they had good relations with the settlers.

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Silent film actress, Dolores Costello, was born on this day in 1903, Drew Barrymore's grandmother.

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Hank Williams was born on this day in 1923, the Hillbilly Shakespeare.

I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill

He sounds too blue to fly

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome, I could cry

I've never seen a night so long

And time goes crawling by

The moon just went behind the clouds

To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep

When leaves begin to die?

Like me, he's lost the will to live

I'm so lonesome, I could cry

The silence of a falling star

Lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome, I could cry

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Apollo 16 astronaut Edgar Mitchell was born on this day in 1930. This quote could be proof enough, for anybody who thinks the moon landings are a hoax.

"The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window, every two minutes: The Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and the whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens. And that was a powerful, overwhelming experience. And suddenly I realized that the molecules of my body, and the molecules of the spacecraft, the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. And that was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness; it wasn't 'Them and Us', it was 'That's me!', that's all of it, it's... it's one thing. And it was accompanied by an ecstacy, a sense of 'Oh my God, wow, yes', an insight, an epiphany."

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Anne Bancroft was born on this day in 1931.
Arthur Penn- "She was ready, and it was glorious. When you teach the young or the eager or the hungry, it's very important; it's very serious. Annie was like that, because she had the talent, and she hadn't had the opportunities. No one--including myself--thought she was any good, and we wondered why she was trying so hard. Well, she was breaking out of the prison of our expectations and her bad luck, and she was extraordinary. In The Actors Studio she was feral and brilliant, and soon we were doing 'Two for the Seesaw.' Annie changed my life not only because she brought both of us success, but because she taught me the importance of always being hungry, of always trying harder, of always defying expectations."

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Ken Kesey joined us on this day in 1935. They wanted to put his bus in the Smithsonian. He said no way, that nothing should get dusty in a museum when it still has life in it. I love that, and I've held on to it.

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John Ritter was born on this day in 1948. Did I mention how the opening credits of Three's Company crack up? Of course I did  I'm cracking up right now thinking about them.

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Comedian, Rita Rudner, was born on this day in 1953.

"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult."

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Philosopher, Karl Popper, left us on this day in 1994.

"No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude."

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Other notable birthdays- Orlando Cepeda (1937), Billy the Kid (1859)

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Other notable deathdays- Bobby Heenan (2017) 

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Huffington Post

21 Habits Of Supremely Happy People, by Kate Bratskeir

1. They surround themselves with happy people.

2. They smile when they mean it.

3. They cultivate resilience.

4. They try to be happy.

5. They are mindful of the good.

6. They appreciate simple pleasures.

7. They devote some of their time giving.

8. They let themselves lose track of time, and sometimes can't help it.

9. They nix the small talk for deeper conversations.

10. They spend money on other people.

11. They make a point to listen.

12. They uphold in-person connections.

13. They look on the bright side.

14. They value a good mixtape.

15. They unplug.

16. They get spiritual.

17. They make exercise a priority.

18. They go outside.

19. They spend some time on the pillow.

20. They LOL.

21. They walk the walk.

I always thought happiness was overrated, but that's certainly when you already have it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/happiness-habits-of-exuberant-human-beings_n_3909772.html

September 17, 2013

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Alternet, September, 2013- The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever

In a sentence:

"We want to believe we’re rational, but reason turns out to be the ex post facto way we rationalize what our emotions already want to believe."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.alternet.org/amp/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever-2647248122

September 17, 2013

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Huffington Post- Lincoln Project Co-Founder Names Trump's 'Greatest Lie In American History'

Spoiler alert- his admission of downplaying the virus. From the article:

"A death rate similar to Germany would have meant 140,000 fewer deaths in the United States. Instead, Trump seems to be pushing for herd immunity, which Schmidt described as “the most immoral plan ever articulated in the history of the country by a president.” Schmidt cited estimates that a herd immunity approach without a vaccine could lead to nearly 3 million deaths."

Oh, this just in... our kindergarten president just said he was actually "up-playing" it all along. I guess we're fine then.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steve-schmidt-greatest-lie_n_5f62f13ac5b6c6317cffb665?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003

September 17, 2020

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Washington Post- Trump voters trust him more than they trust friends and family

Seems wise.

The percentages (of Trump voters) who say they trust each of the following to tell them what’s true breaks down like this:

Trump: 71 percent

Friends and family: 63 percent

Conservative media figures: 56 percent

Religious leaders: 42 percent

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/21/poll-trump-voters-trust

September 17, 2023

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A divorced couple dividing up there beanie babies in court.

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Jimmy Carr- "Saying that you don’t believe in magic but do believe in God is a bit like saying you don’t have sex with dogs, except Labradors.”

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Montaigne- "Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens."

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Stephen Jay Gould- "When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown."

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Werner Herzog- "I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity."

Hitchcock considered it the 3xact essence of filmmaking.

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Mitchell again- "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch."

Addendum

Bertrand Forer- "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."

He has you pegged, doesn't he?