Sentences That Haven't Been Uttered Since the Dawn of Human Language

I just finished a book of samurai legends that I had been reading for a while. Quite a while, indeed. The bookmark was a pay stub from August of 2000.

September 4, 2022

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Voltaire- "It's difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

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I'm watching the new 911 documentary on Netflix. A firefighter said his final prayer before the debris hit was to make his death quick and painless. His prayers weren't answered though. He lived.

September 4, 2021

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Drinking some tea tonight. Earl gray, tepid.

September 4, 2018

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Muhammad Ali dodging 21 punches in 10 seconds.

https://youtu.be/nxZ-J7xit5Y

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Dalai Lama Facebook post, September 4, 2017:

"We face all sorts of problems, many of them of our own making. Why? Because we are swayed by emotions like anger and fear. However, I believe we can learn to tackle such emotions. And one of the most effective remedies for dealing with destructive emotions is to cultivate loving-kindness on the basis of the oneness of all 7 billion human beings."

Haha! Some commenter wrote, "Lol. Yeah right, wake up dude." Oneness takes all kinds!

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In the span of Gretel's nap, Zuzu took her first steps and said her first word.

September 4, 2016

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Apache leader Geronimo and his remaining warriors, surrendered to General Nelson Miles in Arizona on this day in 1886. They eluded them for 30 years.

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On this day in 1927, Buster Keaton pulled off the greatest stunt in the history of the movies.

https://youtu.be/mN0I7R_NCe4?si=__p4NmY1hPtLK9vj

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On this day in 1957 Elizabeth Eckford was confronted by an angry mob while she walked to her newly desegregated school. I always wondered what happened to the screaming lady in the back. I thought about going on Find-a-Grave and posting it! I just looked her up- Hazel Massery, maybe not dead yet. The two of them actually made amends at a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of school's desegregation. I love that!

From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

"One of the fascinating stories to come out of the reunion was the apology that Hazel Bryan Massery made to Elizabeth Eckford for a terrible moment caught forever by the camera. That 40-year-old picture of hate assailing grace — which had gnawed at Ms. Massery for decades — can now be wiped clean, and replaced by a snapshot of two friends. The apology came from the real Hazel Bryan Massery, the decent woman who had been hidden all those years by a fleeting image. And the graceful acceptance of that apology was but another act of dignity in the life of Elizabeth Eckford."

A story of courage, error, and redemption.

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Jim Abbott, who was born without a right hand, pitched a no-hitter on this day in 1993.

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Richard Wright joined us on this day in 1908. From Native Son- "Literature is a struggle over the nature of reality."

Native Son and Black Boy, must-reads.

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Steve Irwin left us on this day in 2006. Norm Macdonald's take:

It was tragic, at the time. People came up to me and said, "You wouldn't believe who got killed! The Crocodile Hunter! He was 44 years old. I figure that is a ripe old age for a crocodile hunter. You know who has to be pissed - the crocodiles. Because he got killed by some fruity fish. You know the crocodiles were like: "Hey the crocodile hunter got killed, who did it? Frank?" "Nah, you don't even want to know man." "Bill, you had a chance once." "Yeah, I had a chance - he was taunting me with a stick and I could have had him and his fucking kid."

I don't know how Norm pulled this off. He said this within like a week of him dying. The old switcheroo, look at it from the crocodile point of view. It doesn't look at it from the point of view of the crocodiles he saved, but I guess that's not really the point.

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Joan Rivers left us on this day in 2014. How could that be? Where would we be without her? I'm talking about the comedian, not the person that thinks everybody else looks like shit.

Greg Giraldi at her roast- “How much worse could your real face look than that clown mask you’ve had welded on your head.  You used to look your age now you don’t even look your species.”

Joan Rivers- "I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That means you're alive. Things are happening."

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Lawyer and activist, William Kunstler, left us on this day in 1995, on Beyonce's 14th birthday. Here he is on the Chicago 8 trial:

"And that’s the terrible myth of organized society, that everything that’s done through the established system is legal and that word has a powerful psychological impact. It makes people believe that there is an order to life, and an order to a system, and that a person that goes through this order and is convicted, has gotten all that is due him. And therefore society can turn its conscience off, and look to other things and other times. And that’s the terrible thing about these past trials, is that they have this aura of legitimacy, this aura of legality. I suspect that better men than the world has known and more of them, have gone to their deaths through a legal system than through all the illegalities in the history of man. Six million people in Europe during the Third Reich? Legal. Sacco Vanzetti? Quite legal. The Haymarket defendants? Legal. The hundreds of rape trials throughout the South where black men were condemned to death? All legal. Jesus? Legal. Socrates? Legal. And that is the kaleidoscopic nature of what we live through here and in other places. Because all tyrants learn that it is far better to do this thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretense.”

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Whitney Cummings was born on this day in 1982. 

"I feel like having a baby and having a dog are pretty much the same except for the part where your vagina gets ruined."

I think she sat on a hilarious joke. Pause and then add that her dog ruined her vagina.

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Mike Piazza was born on this day in 1968. “Nobody wanted me. Scouts told me to go to school, to forget baseball. Coaches said, ‘You’re never going to make it.’ I appreciated their honesty, because I think when someone tells you something you may not like, you have to use that as fuel for motivation.”

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I like this guy. 

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A gay friend reposted a Christian post pointing out that "demon" is in the middle of "priDE MONth." I pointed out that an anagram of "Christmas" is "crams shit."

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George Washington- “It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.”

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Copy and pasted:

Dear Texas, 

I'm not pro-murdering babies. 

I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20 week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs. 

I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later. 

I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child. 

I'm pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11 year old body isn't mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal. 

I'm pro-Melissa who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her. 

I'm pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child. 

I'm pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction in order to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE amount of fetuses. 

I’m pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster's child. 

I'm pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager. 

I'm pro-Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding. 

You can argue and say that I'm pro-choice all you want, but the truth is:

I'm pro-life. 

Their lives. 

Women's lives.

You don't get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted. 

It's not about which stories you don't agree with. It's about fighting for the women in the stories that you do agree with and the CHOICE that was made. 

Women's rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation!

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

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," dialogue by Robert Duvall, in "Apocalypse Now."

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!" Alfonso Bedoya to Humphrey Bogart in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

"I want to live again. I want to live again. I want to live again. Please God, let me live again." Jimmy Stewart to the angel in "It's a Wonderful Life."

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I went outside to see what Gretel wants to do with our hissing cockroach babies and found a six-person band on my front porch, including two accordionists.

Join me again tomorrow on, Sentences That Haven't Been Uttered Since the Dawn of Human Language

September 4, 2022

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September 4, 2019

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Zuzu is on a bug safari.

September 4, 2016

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Gretel and Zuzu are getting along quite well. 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153236452918512&id=741063511&mibextid=NnVzG8

September 4, 2015

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John Mulaney- "I can’t listen to any new songs. Because every new song is about how tonight is the night and we only have tonight. That is such 19-year-old horsesh-t. I want to write songs for people in their 30s called 'Tonight’s No Good. How About Wednesday? Oh, you’re in Dallas Wednesday? Let’s Not See Each Other for Eight Months and It Doesn’t Matter at All.'"

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Shemp, in Square heads of the Round Table:

"Say how come a nice kid like you has such an old sour puss for a pappy? He sure is a mean old galute. Ha, ha. He's got a puss like a snappin' turtle. Yea, like a snapping' turtle with a belly ache." 

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Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot:

And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again.

The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.

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Truman Capote- "Did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence [sic] ever, quite unexpectedly, see something, a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape, so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? And you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? That is, I think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror."

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Goethe- "If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise."

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William Saroyan, The Human Comedy- "You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right."

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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein- "How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow."

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William James- "We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep."

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There was a young man of Eau Claire

Who had an affair with a bear,

But the surly old brute

With a snap of her snoot

Left him only one ball and some hair.