Dreaming of a Dream Blog

Now that Trump has casually admitted a few times that he lost the 2020 election, I wonder if his pretend victory will remain a central tenet of the Trump religion. Is ultimate truth defined by Trump's current words, or his prior words? 

Or, can we all just admit that all of his words are meaningless? He's clearly setting the table to once again cry "voter fraud, wah, wah, wah," the same as he does every election, whether he wins or loses. Sometimes he has even said out loud that it's fraud if he loses, and legitimate if he wins. 

He's already refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and he's declared the 2024 election fraudulent... you know, because he said that Harris's AI-generated Michigan crowd photos qualify as "election interference." 

We need a resounding defeat of this charlatan. We're really losing something by not having two functioning parties. The Republicans got destroyed in 1964 and won huge in 1968. The Democrats lost huge in 1972 and then won in 1976. The Republicans have to lose big, leave this personality cult to the dustbin of history, and rebuild.

September 6, 2024

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Monica Belucci, playing herself inside David Lynch's Gordon Cole's dream:

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?"

I believe that's the key to all of Twin Peaks, might need to watch it all again with that in mind. Are the actors the dreamers? Are we? Is it David Lynch? Is it all of us?

I said it before and I'll say it again. I wasn't all that into the original Twin Peaks. Fire Walk With Me was a great film. The Return though, it was somehow like a new religion.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/david-lynch-found-the-perfect-ending-for-twin-peaks/538818/

September 6, 2017

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Alcaraz is so unbelievably good. I bet he could stand on the baseline sun up to sundown, lobbing ball after ball into tennis ball cans lined up on the opposite baseline.

September 6, 2023

*Watching the US Open quarterfinals.

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I think the best criticism of the Atlantic article is that it relies on anonymous sources. However, that criticism overlooks a basic established fact- Trump himself has said similar things on video, and through tweets. 

He's called McCain a loser while disparaging his war hero status, downgraded Generals Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly, fought publicly with the families of those who were killed in uniform, etc. Certainly we can use Trump as an original source as well, and the article does!

I agree that the anonymous sources should come forward and speak up using their own voices, but some Trump supporters say they still wouldn't believe them. Of course they wouldn't, but they don't need to. Again, they can believe Trump himself. 

If Ted Bundy confesses to killing someone, is it really that hard to believe the evidence showing he killed 36? Is it really hard to believe that Trump has worse beliefs than what he's already confessed to, out loud, on camera? 

One thing you hear a lot- look at his actions, don't listen to his words. "Don't listen to his words," is something that could only be said about someone the speaker believes to be immoral to begin with. Obama supporters didn't say "don't listen to his words." I don't know if any supporters would have ever said that about any president. 

Nobody believes in principle that a president's words don't matter. Some just like to pretend that only Trump's words don't matter, that he's special somehow.

Why on Earth should we not listen to someone's words??? MAYBE we should not listen to the words of somebody who thinks we should not listen to Trump's words!

DO listen to Trump's words. He'll tell you what he really believes. Words have real-world consequences. We can expect followers to follow his words, which might be bad enough ("vote twice") but policy could follow too. His words give you a window into his brain. If you can determine he's immoral by his words, expect worse to be hiding.

Listen to the Access Hollywood tape and realize that he really believes what he's saying- something, incidentally, that several dozen women have actually accused him of. Listen to him when he says an accuser wasn't good-looking enough for him to want to assault.

He really does believe that police shouldn't be too nice to those they apprehend. 

He really does believe those in the crowd at his rallies should rough up anybody who protests.

He really does believe that Carly Fiorina's face was not presidential.

He really does believe that separating migrant families is a good deterrent.

He really does believe Putin over our intelligence agencies. 

He told us all this stuff! He's exposed himself as a bad guy, and we can expect bad things come from bad people.

So listen to Trump when he tells you how little he respects people's military service, and ask yourself if it's really that unbelievable that he would refer to those who died in battle as losers and suckers. 

For someone so obsessed with appearances... is he the type of person who would want a North Korea-style military parade? 

For someone so supremely narcissistic... is it really hard to believe that wouldn't want wounded vets to appear in his parade, and that he would worry about how it would make HIM look, versus how it would make THEM feel?

Someone so monomaniacally obsessed with money... is it really that hard to believe he doesn't understand the meaning of sacrifice when there's no money in it? Is it really hard to believe that Kelly told his friends that Trump views the world exclusively in terms of money, and that non-transactional life choices make no since to him? If Trump doesn't understand the concept, it's not a stretch to think Trump would question Kelly's son's choice at his grave with Kelly. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but it's absolutely believable.

Oh sure, he's going to tell you that he respects their military service as well, but really listen to him when he says he doesn't respect it. When someone voices both opinions, and you only listen to the positive, guess which one they really believe. Look at Trump in his totality and don't be a sucker.

September 6, 2020

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Sometimes when I'm putting my kids to bed I intentionally ask them too many questions so that they'll want me to leave them alone so they can fall asleep. Tonight I asked Zuzu to tell me her favorite colors. I offered some choices. Maroon? Chartreuse? Polka dot? Azure? Lime? Snickerdoodle? She told me her favorite colors- "orange, green, red, yellow, blue, purple, black, gray and white." All of them! I told her that reminded me of a Buddhist story. A man went to the meat store and asked the butcher which was the best piece of meat. The butcher said they are all the best. Then the man found enlightenment. I paused. I asked if she understood. She was fading into sleep. I asked her again quietly if she understood. And again, even more quietly. From out of nowhere though she pepped up and asked for another story. Rats! Well I guess it made an impression her at least.

September 6, 2019

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Gretel and I went running tonight, and passed a guy who smiled at us and then yelled after us, "Thank you for showing me beauty tonight!" Don't get all mushy gushy, I think he was just trying to impress the girl he was with. I shouldn't be so cynical, he might have just been on drugs.

September 6, 2018

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It's very unlikely that I'll need to fire anybody tomorrow, so I decided to wear my Golden Girls on Mount Rushmore t-shirt. If it turns out I do need to fire somebody, I'll just zip up my sweatshirt.

September 6, 2018

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Any coincidence that the countries with the highest taxes per GDP also tend to top the charts in happiness/well-being polls?

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If you have Netflix and enjoy one-liners, I'll suggest Demetri Martin Live (At the Time.) 

People say "shotgun" when they want the front seat. You should say "shotgun" when you're eating rice and you have to sneeze.

September 6, 2015

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From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

"What is Zen?"

One answer: Inayat Khan tells a Hindu story of a fish who went to a queen fish and asked: "I have always heard about the sea, but what is this sea? Where is it?"

The queen fish explained: "You live, move, and have your being in the sea. The sea is within you and without you, and you are made of sea, and you will end in sea. The sea surrounds you as your own being."

Another answer:

September 6, 2014

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Let's tip our hats today to the commies... if they wouldn't have been leaving the democratic party in droves in the 30's, Roosevelt wouldn't have been forced to break with the status quo and push for the end of child labor, beginning of the 40-hour work week, overtime, an end of sweatshop working conditions, minimum wage, 2-day weekend, and paid holidays. Thank you commies!

September 6, 2010

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Apparently I fell asleep on the living room chair last night and woke up to Emma trying to snap a quick picture after she put a big googly-eye on my forehead. If she's to be trusted, I slapped it away and said "This gag is OVER!"

September 6, 2009

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Vegetable Pigs

Let's say two pigs eat nothing but vegetables their entire lives, and then they have a baby pig that eats nothing but vegetables its entire life. Since that pig is composed of nothing but vegetables, why couldn't a vegetarian eat it?

September 6, 2009

Postscript- This is similar to Aquinas's Cannibal Problem. If a cannibal has only ever eaten people, his body is composed entirely out of others. If he becomes a Christian in his last moment, his body goes to heaven, which must be impossible since it's composed of heathens. This is the type of thing they dwelled on back then. 

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Joseph Campbell- The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers- "Life is joyful just as it is. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: ‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’ And the way to wake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all… I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera – except that it hurts."

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The Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, England on this day in 1620.

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Unemployed anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, shot and fatally wounded William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on this day in 1901.

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On this day in 1933, in Indianapolis, Indiana

John Dillinger, along with Copeland and Goldstein, robbed the State Bank of Massachusetts Avenue of $25,000.

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A Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed in Philadelphia on this day in 1943 killing 79 people and injuring 117 others.

In 1952, a prototype aircraft crashed at an airshow in Hampshire, England, killing 29 spectators and the two on board.

If you don't pay attention, history just seems like a lot of tragedies!

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William S. Burroughs and his wife did their William Tell act in this day in 1951. She held her glass on her head and he shot her, killing her instantly.

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Cal Ripken Jr. Played in his 2,131st consecutive game on this day in 1995, breaking Lou Gehrig's record that had stood for 56 years.

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Max Schreck, of Nosferatu fame, was born on this day in 1879. Curious taking a break on set.

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Ignorant slut, Jane Curtin, was born on this day in 1947.

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Akira Kurosawa left us on this day in 1998, one of the all-time greats.

He directed like 20 masterpieces, including Dreams.

"Man is a genius when he is dreaming."

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Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries joined us on this day in 1971. One of my all-time favorite songs:

DREAMS

Oh, my life is changing everyday

In every possible way

And oh, my dreams

It's never quite as it seems

Never quite as it seems

I know I felt like this before

But now I'm feeling it even more

Because it came from you

Then I open up and see

The person falling here is me

A different way to be

Aah, la-ah-la-ah

La-la-la

La-ah-la-ah

I want more, impossible to ignore

Impossible to ignore

And they'll come true

Impossible not to do

Possible not to do

And now I tell you openly

You have my heart so don't hurt me

You're what I couldn't find

A totally amazing mind

So understanding and so kind

You're everything to me

Oh, my life is changing everyday

In every possible way

And oh, my dreams

It's never quite as it seems

'Cause you're a dream to me

Dream to me

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Francis Donkin Bedford- "To Die Will Be an Awfully Big Adventure."

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Other notable birthdays- Jeff Foxworthy (1958), Chris Christie (1962)

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Other notable deathdays- Ernest Tubb (1984), Burt Reynolds (2018), Jean-Paul Belmondo (2021)

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Steinbeck- "To be alive at all is to have scars."

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Louis CK honors George Carlin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU

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Haha, for some people "freedom of religion" means "you must choose a religion!"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/dana-perino-fox-news-atheists_n_3882597.html

September 6, 2013

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From a News Observer article on religion fading:

"It's fascinating to watch the culture evolve. When I became a young reporter in Charleston, W.Va., the 1950s, Appalachian Bible Belt taboos were locked into law. It was a felony to be gay. It was a felony for a desperate girl to end a pregnancy. It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. Mixed-race marriage was against the law. It was a crime to sell a cocktail, lottery ticket or anything akin to a Playboy magazine. Schools had mandatory teacher-led prayer. It was a crime for an unwed couple to live together or even share a bedroom. All those religion-based laws slowly vanished as society turned more secular."

September 6, 2016

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From Elizabeth Alexander's memoir, The Light if the World

"Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in their last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore. It is on display at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, like Galileo’s finger in the church of Santa Croce, but Edison’s last breath is an invisible relic."

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Carl Sagan- "Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your planet."

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The Eskimo Cookbook (1952)

Boiled Owl

Take feathers off. Clean owl and put in cooking pot with lots of water. Add salt to taste.

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Mark Twain- "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."

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Bertrand Russell- "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

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Woody Allen- "More than any time in history man kind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

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Kurosawa again- "No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is and they would put an end to it."

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John Koenig wrote The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, "a compendium of invented words." I've always loved this list of 23 emotions people feel but can't explain. I'll list several a day.

1. Sonder

The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

2. Opia

The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

3. Monachopsis

The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

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Knockout list! Gave me goosebumps.

Looper-20 Best Film Noir Movies Of All Time Ranked

1. Shadow of a Doubt

2. Maltese Falcon

3. Laura

4. In a Lonely Place

5. Strangers on a Train

6. Sweet Smell of Success

7. Sunset Boulevard 

8. Strangers on a Train

9. Rebecca

10. Kiss Me Deadly

11. Double Indemnity

12. To Have and Have Not

13. The Big Sleep

14. Detour

15. Suspicion

16. Notorious

17. The Killing

18. In a Lonely Place

19. Touch of Evil

20. Night of the Hunter

The only one that immediately crosses my mind as missing is Out of the Past. But what should it replace?

https://www.looper.com/993293/best-film-noir-movies-of-all-time-ranked/

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Camilo Jose Cela- "There are two kinds of man: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it."

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Stephen Fry- "I like to wake up each morning and not know what I think, that I may reinvent myself in some way."

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Truman Capote, In Cold Blood- "Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity."

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William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways- "A rule of the blue road: Be careful going in search of adventure—it’s ridiculously easy to find."

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe- "One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going."

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William Saroyan- "Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes."

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William James:

To change one’s life:

1. Start immediately.

2. Do it flamboyantly.

3. No exceptions.

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Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons- "Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!"

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Richard Wright, Black Boy- "Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one live in a world in which one's mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and tradition meant everything? There were no answers."

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Herzog On Kinski- "People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder."

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A young curate, just new to the cloth,

At sex was surely no sloth.

He preached masturbation

To his whole congregation,

And was washed down the aisle on the froth.