Predictable Futures, Surprising Pasts, and Unpredictability

I'll be damned if my eyes didn't just get all teary! The inevitable time has come. Greatness can't only be judged by the amount of grand slams, can it? Certainly beauty must be weighed in, right? Goodbye to the greatest ever.

Carlos Alcaraz- "Watching Federer is like looking at a work of art. It's elegance, he did everything magnificently. I became enchanted by him."

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We're at the beach for a few days with a couple fuchsia-heads.

September 15, 2022

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Every time I go to the beach I think about all the buildings existing on borrowed time. So you have the balance between land and water, and also present and future. There really is something about the beach that captivates me and when I leave I feel a twinge of crushing depression that some people must feel all the time. It might have something to do with leaving a place with such metaphorical significance.

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I keep thinking about Grace Kelly, her quote about not wanting to be a personality. That is a great sentiment! Back then celebrities were supposed to be personalities. But personality is just fluff on top of your essence.

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Talking with Eric Holtry about how people love holding on to their anger, and then telling people about it, reliving it. People have a lot invested in their anger and have a strong desire to hold on to it. They don't even realize they can just drop it, and it's a more enjoyable life. Once you realize people do this, you see it all the time. And also once you think about everybody else doing it, you're forced to consider how you do it yourself.

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Perhaps the best thing about Norm MacDonald's comedy was that he was often messing with the majority the audience for the benefit of the minority of the audience that truly got him. 

My favorite joke of his from Weekend Update was when he showed two pie graphs illustrating gender differences of auto crash responsibility and explained that while women get into more fender benders, men were responsible for more fatal crashes. He added that the math in the pie graphs didn't add up though because it was done by a woman. A bunch of women in the audience booed, and he added that it should also be noted that the joke was written by a woman, "so now you don't know what in the hell to do, do you?" 

He intentionally bombed in front of a live audience at the Bob Saget roast, but that was the point. He was bombing for the benefit of all the comedians up front who found what he was doing absolutely hilarious. And it was! Here's a joke- "He has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl, and the eye of an eagle. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds." That's a terrible joke, and the worse the joke in that situation, the better the comedy. The whole audience is asking themselves what the hell is going on, and a bunch of comedians are up front laughing their heads off at the situation. "Take Jim Norton. They say people come in all colors but he is green with envy and has a yellow stripe up his back." 

One time he did stand up on Letterman and opened with something like, "Do you people have teeth?" He then went right into like 8 minutes of teeth jokes. 

How did he get away with that? And how did he get away with the gay pride joke on Conan, or the Steve Irwin jokes on Jon Stewart, just 10 days after Steve Irwin died. 

His jokes are either funny or not, and somehow they are even more funny when they're not. None of it makes any sense!

September 15, 2022

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One way that you know that you made a great shot in tennis, is when someone walking by can't help but burst out- "Great shot!" That just happened to me while I was playing Sloth. Haha.

September 15, 2020

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Someone asked Trump if he's concerned about having indoor rallies and he said, "I'm on a stage and it's very far away and so I'm not at all concerned."

Trump just broke the measuring device for Trump gaffes. Did you ever notice how other people's gaffes are generally mistakes, and Trump's gaffes expose his rotten inner core?

September 15, 2020

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I know what's going to happen election night!

What's going to happen is- we're not going to know who won.

-An estimated 80% of Republicans plan to vote in person while only 40% of Democrats plan to. There will be way too many mail-in ballots to count on Election Day, so election night it will look like Trump is way ahead, whether voters gave him the electoral college or not. 

-Based on that, Trump will claim victory. 

-As the totals in every single state inevitably creep up for Biden over the next several days, Trump will squawk at the top of his lungs that it's rigged.

-We don't even have to speculate about Trump's reaction, it already played out with the Sinema/McNally race in Arizona in 2018. Sinema was 1% behind on election day, and Trump screamed "RIGGED!" as the totals reversed over the next several days. She ended up 2% ahead.

-IF polls stay the same as they are now (and they've been steady for months) we can expect it to look like Trump has about 330 electoral votes on election night to Biden's 200 or so. But five days later, once all the votes are counted, it could LEGITIMATELY be reversed with Biden winning in a landslide. (Not that Biden WILL win... the race will inevitably tighten, but how much?)

-They could measure the percentage of mail-in votes for Republicans and Democrats on Election Day, and have a very good idea where things are going to land several days later. Trump could actually be ahead 3% in some state on election night, and they could reliably predict that he'll be 3% down once the votes are counted. They could even call the state for Biden while Trump appears ahead.

Somehow I don't think that would satisfy him! But look at his re-election strategy... piss off 60% of the population for four years, and then run on the election being rigged, and more of the same while we face multiple crises. He doesn't deserve to be satisfied!

September 15, 2020

Postscript: On the money!

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I'm so excited for Ken Burns' Country Music film, set to come on in about 5 minutes- 8 parts, each about 2 hours long. I had a moment of horror though- "oh crap, the last four parts might be from the 70's to present." Then I threw up a little bit in my mouth. But the 7th episode starts in the 70s and its title is, "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" Burnsy's got this!

September 15, 2019

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We went to Strasburg Mennonite Church today to visit our grandcestors.

September 15, 2019

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Gretel just told me that it's good to kill kings and queens when they're bad. I told her that sometimes it's good when the worst people die, but asked how someone knows whether they're good or bad? She said kings and queens are bad because they tell people to do things. I told her that if they're telling people to do good things then there's no problem, but if they tell people to do bad things then there's a big problem. Gretel said that they would be bad if they tell people to kill kids, or to carve kids. 

"Did you just say to carve kids???" 

She said, "Yeah carve kids like a pumpkin."

Rest of the conversation is kind of a blur. I think we were talking about jail versus capital punishment, but let's face it, we need to bring back the guillotine for Gretel's hypothetical king and queen.

September 15, 2018

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Who is my favorite living comedian? Ricky Gervais, Larry David, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman? I don't know... maybe Norm MacDonald. His new show on Netflix it's so funny. And when it's not funny, it's still so enjoyable. I did not expect him and Drew Barrymore to get into a conversation about Bukowski. He asked Judge Judy if the fact that she's rich has changed her view on mortality, because she has all the more to leave behind. Great interviewer.

September 15, 2018

Postscript: Unfathomable that he only had three years minus one day left.

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The newest Trump ad is extraordinary... it shows Clinton calling half of Trump's supporters a basket of deplorables. Then, to it's credit somehow, it shows her clarifying who she's talking about- racists, sexists, etc., except it draws out her words to make it sound like she's droning on. Then it ends with a mind-blowing, "She's talking about you!" Or something like that. "I'm Donald Trump and I approved this message." I bet he did! This is a dangerous person.

September 15, 2016

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If there's a cat god, I'm praying to it.

September 15, 2010

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I'm very proud of the 162 of you who decided to not take me up on my offer to tell you the the most repulsive thing that ever happened to me. To the other seven of you, pleasant nightmares!

September 15, 2010

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Some raw emotions...

Best Cry Ever and Best Laugh Ever   

https://youtu.be/ee925OTFBCA

https://youtu.be/LHEBd_igOGs 

September 15, 2010

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Emma's the type of girl who likes to stick two big googly eyes over her real eyes and shake her head around.

September 15, 2009

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Charles Darwin landed on the Galápagos Islands on this day in 1835. 

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One hundred years later, on this day in 1935, Nazi Germany adopted a new national flag bearing the swastika. Don't be fooled, some people in our country have adopted a Trump flag. And no, that doesn't mean I think Trump is a Nazi! He just uses their playbook to his advantage. 

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Marilyn Monroe's iconic skirt scene was shot during filming for The Seven Year Itch on this day in 1954.

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The stuff of nightmares- on this day in 1958 a Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train ran through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 48. 

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Lyndon B. Johnson responded to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin just over a year later, writing a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation. Good luck with that LBJ. Maybe your great-grandkids we'll do something. Granted, difficult problem.

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On this day in 1978, Muhammad Ali beat Leon Spinks in a rematch to become the first boxer to win the world heavyweight title three times

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The Golden Girls premiered on this day in 1985, about a year and a half after Minor Threat's first album. I watched it in my grandma and grandpa's basement.

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The Japanese monk Saichō, was born on this day in 767. It's said that he is the one who brought tea to Japan. 

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The explorer, Marco Polo, was born on this day in 1254.

I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed."

If he wrote down half of it, he would have only seen a tenth of it to begin with.

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Oliver Stone and Tommy Lee Jones, the respective director and a star of Natural Born Killers, were each born on this day in 1946.

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Roy Acuff was born on this day in 1903. I sketched an outline for a western movie once, and this was going to be the final song. It was going to play as the atom bombs dropped and the credits rolled.

THIS WORLD CAN'T STAND LONG

A long time this world has stood

It gets more wicked every day

The maker who created it

Will never let it stand this way

This world can't stand long

Be ready and don't be late

We should know this world can't stand

For it's too full of hate

This world was destroyed before

Because it was so full of sin

And for that very reason now

It's gotta be destroyed again

This world can't stand long

Be ready and don't be late

We should know this world can't stand

For it's too full of hate

Everyone knows this world can't stand

For in the Bible it's plain to see

Fire and brimstone shall rain down

And carry us to eternity

This world can't stand long

Be ready and don't be late

We should know this world can't stand

For it's too full of hate

Let's all give our hearts to God

And let Him lead us by the hand

If we will only trust in Him

He'll lead us beyond the burning sand

This world can't stand long

Be ready and don't be late

We should know this world can't stand

For it's too full of hate

https://youtu.be/NJ8RR3croQw

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Jimmy Carr two was born on this thing in 1972. I wanted to list a few of his "career-ender" jokes, but when you search for them all that comes up are news articles on how those jokes nearly ended his career.

You know what he once said to a heckler? He left a very pregnant pause building anticipation, then said "If you want my comeback, you'd have to scrape it off your mom's teeth."

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Other notable birthdays- James Fenimore Cooper (1789), William Howard Taft (1857), Jean Renoir (1894), Fay Wray (1906), Adrian Adonis (1954), Wendie Jo Sperber (1958)

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Thomas Wolfe left us on this day in 1938.

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

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Robert Penn Warren left us on this day in 1989. I'm not sure whether knowledge was the cause.

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.” 

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Johnny Ramone left us on this day in 2004.

"My favorite artists have always been Elvis and The Beatles and they still are!"

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Harry Dean Stanton left us on this day in 2017.

Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain

https://youtu.be/7KrANPZhoFI

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Ladies and gentlemen, Ted Chaough

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Wow, if English Wikipedia was printed out it would be 1,133,500 pages.

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Yahoo News- Planet Like 'Star Wars' Tatooine Discovered Orbiting 2 Suns

There's a new best headline of the day.

http://news.yahoo.com/planet-star-wars-tatooine-discovered-orbiting-2-suns-181404397.html

September 15, 2011

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Rick Santorum- "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/rick-santorum-says-smart-people-will-never-be-on

September 15, 2012

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A prank and a half! Someone used the Onion 9/11 Subway coupon- two footlings for $9.11.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/a-subway-store-accepted-the-onions-fake-911-coupon

September 15, 2013

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More world-class pranks, compliments of Cracked:

-Getting Castro to call you a faggot.

-Convincing a ton of people that they are about to die.

-A fake Burlington Coat Factory giveaway gets people so pissed they steal coats they thought would be free.

-The Yes Men's $2 billion stock gag.

-A man earns multiple degrees, while not existing.

-Another man who also doesn't exist is a world famous artist

-Shenanigans that helped win WWII.

https://www.cracked.com/article_18478_the-7-ballsiest-pranks-you-wont-believe-actually-worked.html

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Psychology Today- Does Consciousness Exist Outside the Brain?

Provocative article. The conclusion is reasonable enough... there's no empirical reason to believe it, but perhaps. It puts me in mind of something Stanley Kubrick said of the Shining: "Anything that says there's anything after death is ultimately an optimistic story." He then added that he doesn't believe in hell. It also put me in mind of what one of my college philosophy professors concluded about whether or not the tree that fell in the forest made a sound. From the article:

No. Because sound is the conscious perception of sonic or acoustic stimuli that requires a sense organ to experience. Without an ear to hear and a brain to interpret the stimulation there will be only molecular vibrations but no sound, per se.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/think-well/201906/does-consciousness-exist-outside-the-brain

September 15, 2019

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I love this... the 10th president John Tyler had a son at 70 with a much younger second wife, that son then had two kids in his late 60's with a much younger second wife, and those kids are now in their 90's. That would be like my grandkids making it to the 2200's.

https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/history/president-john-tyler-grandsons/

September 15, 2020

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Sean Hagen passed away on this day in 2023. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, from his obituary:

“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night.”

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Haruki Murakami, from Kafka on the Shore:

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. 

  And in a very few cases, a point 

  where you can’t go forward anymore. 

  And when we reach that point, all we can do 

  is quietly accept the fact. 

  That’s how we survive.”

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Putin reportedly wasn't invited to Queen Elizabeth's funeral over his war of aggression in Ukraine. Oh god, I hate to even think of it, imagine for a second that he would drop a nuclear bomb there and wipe out most of the leaders of the world. It would be remembered until the end of humanity. I feel like I shouldn't have even mentioned it. Ummm, knock wood?

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Thoreau- "My greatest skill has been to want little."

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Steffi Graf - "You can't measure success if you have never failed. My father taught me that if you really do want to reach your goals, you can't spend any time worrying about whether you're going to win or lose. Focus only on getting better." 

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Moliere, The Misanthrope, Tartuffe- "The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it."

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Michel de Montaigne- "He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears."

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Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio- "The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

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Louis C.K.- "Everything's amazing right now, and nobody's happy."

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Stephen Jay Gould- "We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists."

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Jimmy Carr- “I realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.”

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Werner Herzog- "I think there should be holy war against yoga classes."

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From a Big Think article on 8 hard-to-spot logical fallacies:

MCNAMARA FALLACY

Named after Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968, this fallacy occurs when decisions are made based solely on quantitative metrics or observations, ignoring other factors. It stems from the Vietnam War, in which McNamara sought to develop a formula to measure progress in the war. He decided on bodycount. But this “objective” formula didn’t account for other important factors, such as the possibility that the Vietnamese people would never surrender.

You could also imagine this fallacy playing out in a medical situation. Imagine a terminal cancer patient has a tumor, and a certain procedure helps to reduce the size of the tumor, but also causes a lot of pain. Ignoring quality of life would be an example of the McNamara fallacy.

Language to watch out for: “You can’t measure that, so it’s not important.”

THAT APPLIES TO FEDERER!

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Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat- "Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra."