Ocean Fins, and Other Revelations of Truth

I did something I never did before when I was walking around Bethany Beach with my kids... I put a dollar in one of those Zoltar Fortune Teller machines. I was certain it would give them some solid advice. Somehow he started out with a James Dean quote. 

Zoltar- "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. That's right, we have to live our days as if they were our last, because one day, they will be. You know what I mean. So go out, have fun, and surrender more cash for more wisdom, from me, the Great Zoltar."

Thanks Zoltar, that's good advice. 

The next day I told my kids that I had something important for them to remember. I told them that sometimes they have a lot of fun with each other, but then they get mad at each other for a little bit, and then when they look back at the end of the day, they only remember the part when they were mad and forget that they were having fun 99% of the time. It's important to keep things in perspective and to remember the fun parts.

You know what Zuzu said? She said, "Dad, you could be the next Zoltar." 

Gretel said I can just walk around the house and every once in a while when they want some advice they would give me a dollar and see what I say. Okay, she might have been kidding a little bit, but I'm going to accept it as a compliment! 

The next time I see them looking online for something they don't really need, I'm going to get them to give me a dollar while I queue up a modified quote from Henry David Thoreau:

"A person is rich in proportion to the number of things they can do without. Now surrender more cash to your daddy to get even more wisdom."

September 23, 2024

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Kamala keeps getting criticized for a lack of substantive answers. Let's keep things in perspective, and look at some of Trump's recent "substantive answers."

When asked about child care recently, he had this to say:

"Well, I would do that. And we’re sitting down – you know, I was somebody – we had – Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka were so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that – because, look, child care is child care. It’s – couldn’t – you know, it’s something – you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care. That – it’s going to take care – we’re going to have – I – I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country. Because I have to say with child care – I want to stay with child care – but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just – that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first, it’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question."

Sorry to subject you to that. Translation, "Child care, schmild care."

Here he is speaking about the California water shortage:

"So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada and all pouring down and they have essentially a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific, and if you turned that back, all of that water would come right down here and into Los Angeles."

Ummm, that's metaphorical faucet, right? Because it sure sounds like he's talking about a literal faucet. OK, let's face the facts, he's definitely talking about a real faucet. As big as that wall of that building over there? Takes one day to turn it? Weird details for a metaphorical faucet! Hahaha. 

I get the idea that people talk to him in metaphors, like they need the dumb it down for him, and then he presents the metaphors as literal. It's like when he thought the Stealth Fighter was literally invisible, or when he implied you literally sweep the forests so that there can't be forest fires.

Here he is when asked about the threat to manufacturing jobs in Michigan:

"OK, so I’ll get into another little bit of a long answer, because when you say major threat to me, we have one really major threat that’s called nuclear weapons. We call it we have other countries that are hostile to us. They don’t have to be hostile to us. I always say if you have a smart president, you’ll never have a problem with China, Russia or any of them. OK, I got along great with Putin. I got along great with President Xi. I got along great with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Everybody said, oh, you can’t get along with them. He liked me. I got along great with him. And he has a lot of nuclear force. But you essentially have five countries and you’re going to have more whether you like it or not. You’re going to have more. It’s a single biggest threat to the world, not only Michigan, to the world. And you’re not going to care so much about making cars if that stuff starts happening."

Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-Un all LIKE him, huh? I don't think he has the capacity to even consider whether they are flattering him to gain influence. Maybe I'm just being cynical. Maybe they do really just want to be friends, haha! Or maybe it's as Kamala said in the debate, and they will eat him for lunch. Wait, what was that question about again, manufacturing jobs in Michigan?

I saw a headline on it: "Trump claims 'nuclear weapons' biggest threat to car industry in bizarre rant." 

That was it though, it was just another "bizarre rant," and the double standard continues. A fraction of any one of these answers would have sunk Kamala's campaign. Biden's campaign was sunk for less. Kamala is expected to be perfect, but Trump is only expected to be Trump. Quite a low bar!

September 23, 2024

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The Tasmanian Devil tore through my house last night. I thought it was a whirlwind of two cats fighting, but it was actually just one cat puking. In five seconds there were ten massive puddles with chunks. That's two piles per second, for the statisticians. How did it all fit inside her? Maybe a better question is, why am I telling you this? I'm not sure, but it's time for dinner and I guess I first need to purge some demons.

September 23, 2022

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At a stand-up performance this week Carrot Top played a clip of Norm Macdonald making fun of him on Conan O'Brien. Reached for comment, an audience member said that it was the funniest moment of the show... because it was a clip of Norm Macdonald, and they were there to see Carrot Top.

September 23, 2021

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I'm driving to Fairmount, Indiana listening to Norm Macdonald's fake autobiography, Based on a True Story. I started laughing before the book even began- "This book is dedicated to Charles Manson. (No, not that one!)"

September 23, 2021

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No big whoop, just me in the ocean today. (Water over thigh high, you will die.)

September 23, 2022

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Woke up to see the sunrise this morning. Reminded me of this exchange from Mad Men:

Roger Sterling: I watched the sunrise this morning - couldn't sleep.

Don Draper: How was it?

Roger Sterling: Average.

The funny thing is... I couldn't remember if it was after-a-drunken-night depressed comment, or after-his-acid-trip enlightened comment. Somehow they both work- either, "there's no beauty in this world," or "there's a quiet beauty in even the most seemingly average events."

September 23, 2019

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I don't know how this Kavanaugh thing will play out between Democrats and Republicans, but I know exactly how it will play out between those who take sexual assault allegations seriously and those who don't. (Those who don't will be an embarrassment to their descendants.)

September 23, 2018

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Emma- "I wouldn't let Ben Kreider get another dog, so he just bought 8 hermit crabs instead."

Gretel gave them good names too- Greedy, Greendie, Peppermint, White Shimmer, Orange Flowerish, Licious, Craws, and Blueberry.

And now we got 4 more- Sky High, Oreo, My Little Pony and Benjamin Kreider.

September 23, 2018

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Gretel and I are apparently working on something like an Abbott and Costello routine. She's the zany one... she rides my shoulders, and once in a while snatches my glasses, cackles and throws them on the ground. It needs work.

September 23, 2016

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This road coffee is horrendous, but nearly worth it for the nostalgia. Somehow I used to drink this garbage all the time.

September 23, 2016

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Yogi Berra died yesterday. If it's true that baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical, then maybe it's also true that if 100% of his life is over he still has 80% left.

September 23, 2015

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Fairmount bound, with this little pancake-eating monkey.

September 23, 2016

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Ken Burns's Civil War premiered on this day in 1990. Easily in my top 10, one of the most magnificent films ever to be created.

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Bruce Springsteen was born on this day in 1949.

I read his excellent autobiography, Born to Run. I love when someone's autobiography contains significant sections about somebody else. And it's so strange that in talking about someone else they are actually talking about themselves. In Brando's autobiography he had like a page-and-a-half about his pet raccoon. Here's Springsteen on Elvis, in part. A real knockout.

"THE BARRICADES HAVE BEEN STORMED!! A FREEDOM SONG HAS BEEN SUNG!! THE BELLS OF LIBERTY HAVE RUNG!! A HERO HAS COME. THE OLD ORDER HAS BEEN OVERTHROWN! The parents, the teachers, the fools so sure they knew THE WAY- THE ONLY WAY to build a life, to have an impact on things and to make a man or woman out of yourself, have been challenged. A HUMAN ATOM HAS JUST SPLIT THE WORLD IN TWO!

The small part of the world I inhabit has stumbled upon an irreversible moment. Somewhere in between the mundane variety acts on a routine Sunday night in the year of our Lord 1956…THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN TELEVISED!! Right underneath the nose of the guardians of all that “IS,” who, if they were aware of the powers they were about to unleash, would call out the national gestapo to SHUT THIS SHIT DOWN!!…or…SIGN IT UP QUICK!! As a matter of fact, the arbiter of public taste in circa-1950s USA, “MC” ED SULLIVAN, was not initially going to let this Southern, sexually depraved hick sully the American consciousness and his stage. Once the genie had been let out of the bottle on national television…IT WOULD BE OVER! THE NATION WOULD FOLD! And we, the great unwashed, the powerless, the marginalized, THE KIDS!…would want…MORE. More life, more love, more sex, more faith, more hope, more action, more truth, more power, more “getdown in the gutter, spit on me, Jesus, teach my blind eyes to SEE” REAL-LIFE RELIGION!! Most of all, we would want more ROCK ’N’ ROLL!!"

Wow.

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Jason Alexander was born on this day in 1959.

"It's not a lie if you believe it."

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Karl Pilkington was born on this day in 1972.

"I find that if you just talk, your mouth comes up with stuff."

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Sigmund Freud left us on this day in 1939.

"What lives wants to die again. The life-drive is in them, but the death-drive as well.

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Italian actress, Anna Magnani, star of Open City, and The Fugitive Kind, left us on this day in 1973. Co-star Marlin Brando had this to say if her:

"I would never want to work with people who only worked as I did or believed as I did, because what do I learn? I was fascinated watching Magnani tear a script apart as if it were a side of beef, searching for tendon and sinew and sweet meat. She was primal! I told you! 'I understand the human heart,' she would say, and she did. She despised analysis and what she called the coddling of the soul, so she disapproved of me and of Joanne because we had shrinks and nutritionists and we read books that might help us think and feel better. What fools we were, we mortals, seemed to be what Magnani was thinking. Live, love, fight, fuck, rage. That might have been her motto."

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Louise Fletcher left us today. One of the top screen villains of all time.

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Independent- Donald Trump: World-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall likens US President to a chimpanzee

“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: Stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position. When chimps are competing for dominance, they do a lot of blustering, swaggering, and intimidation. The chimps who are smart, they use their brain and they get to the top by forming clever alliances, like with their brothers. So you don’t challenge the top guy without a lot of support. They last longer, the ones with the brain. The ones who do the swaggering don’t last as long."

September 23, 2017

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Soon-Yi Previn on Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. For an informed opinion on the controversy, this is certainly worth reading.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/soon-yi-previn-speaks.html

September 23, 2018

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Vanity Fair- THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN IS REPORTEDLY PLOTTING AN ELECTION COUP TO “BYPASS” A BIDEN WIN

Republicans should draw a line in the sand immediately and ask themselves if this is something they'd support. (Or rather, they should ask themselves if it's something they'd support a Democrat doing, because that would tell them whether they support it in principle.)

http://vntyfr.com/XqCdSAU

September 23, 2020

Postscript: So a month before the election Vanity Fair reported that the Trump campaign was going to try use state legislatures to bypass a Biden win. Fake news, right? And then it happened!

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Thomas Merton- "Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith."

I agree. It could also be the fact that there's not a scrap of proof. I think all it would take for me is one actual miracle... Not simply the most coincidental thing that ever happened in my life, but a real miracle that only God could have been responsible for.

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Lev Shestov- "The habit of logical thinking kills imagination. Man is convinced that the only way to truth is through logic, and that any departure from this way leads to error and absurdity. The nearer we approach the ultimate questions of existence, in our departure from logicality, the more deadly becomes the state of error we fall into."

Well if his argument is logical, we can trust it, which means we shouldn't trust it, but if we shouldn't trust it, then the opposite is true, and we should trust it because it's logical... and either way I've spent the last several years developing and immunity to iocane powder.

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I love this! "Robert is the one wearing glasses."

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Charles Alexander Eastman:

"The Indian, in his simple philosophy, was careful to avoid a centralized population, wherein lies civilization’s devil. He would not be forced to accept materialism as the basic principle of his life, but preferred to reduce existence to its simplest terms. 

His roving out-of-door life was more precarious, no doubt, than life reduced to a system, a mechanical routine; yet in his view it was and is infinitely happier. 

To be sure, this philosophy of his had its disadvantages and obvious defects, yet it was reasonably consistent with itself, which is more than can be said for our modern civilization. 

He knew that virtue is essential to the maintenance of physical excellence, and that strength, in the sense of endurance and vitality, underlies all genuine beauty. 

He was as a rule prepared to volunteer his services at any time in behalf of his fellows, at any cost of inconvenience and real hardship, and thus to grow in personality and soul-culture. 

Generous to the last mouthful of food, fearless of hunger, suffering, and death, he was surely something of a hero. Not ‘to have,’ but ‘to be,’ was his national motto." 

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Marlon Brando- "Just remember that when you meditate, you're looking within, not outside for something that will save you. You're going to save yourself."-

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Pilkington again- "I always have a problem liking things that I'm told I should like. This has been the problem with most of the Wonders I have seen so far. The fact that this one is called the 'Great' Wall of China annoys me. I'll decide if it's great or not. It might end up being the 'All Right Wall of China' to me."

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George Costanza- "Oh yeah? Well the Jerk Store called, and they're running out of YOULouis C.K.- "I was watching Rocky with a friend of mine. And there's all these scenes of him sitting on this dirty mattress, alone- this guy is so alone, it's beautiful how alone he is. Nobody's alone like that anymore. Nobody."

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Chief Joseph- "The Earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. The country was made with no lines of demarcation, and it's no man's business to divide it. I see the whites all over the country gaining wealth, and I see the desire to give us lands which are worthless."

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Joan Didion- "Whatever you do, you'll regret both."

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Stephen King- "The most important things are the hardest to say."

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Freud- "Public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.”

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Norm Macdonald, upon seeing a video of himself on a YouTube.

Host- See yourself?

Norm- "Oh yeah, it's me with a huge, fat fucking face."

Host- "I didn't want to be the one to say it."

Norm- "I've been having a lot of trouble. My doctor said, he's not a nice man, he said, '"Open up your mouth and say oink.'"

Host- "You have to get better insurance."

Norm- "Insurance? He was calling me a fat pig."

Around minute 10: https://youtu.be/A848xpsDJbw

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Michel de Montaigne- "To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave."