The Origin of Horror and Hypocrisy, Plus Gourds
Suggest on a conservative page that Republicans would be committing a historical act of hypocrisy by appointing a Supreme Court Justice in an election year, after denying Democrats the ability of doing the same thing last time around, and you're in for a treat of ridiculous responses. A sampling:
-"It's different because it's a Republican nomination and a Republican Senate."
Yes, the definition of hypocrisy!
-"Elections have consequences, and the president was elected for four years, not three years and eight months."
OK, it's good to know that you now understand the argument from last time around. And it only took you, let me check my math, three years and eight months. What a coincidence!
-"The Democrats would do the same if the situation was reversed."
Great, so we can do anything that we know is wrong- because if we don't, someone else will. Go rob a bank, and as your defense tell them that the guy behind you was going to do the same thing!
-"What's the problem? Why can't a president nominate somebody?"
Oh you coy little fellow!
-"Haha, go to hell, too bad for you, lmfao."
It's my favorite, because they are telling the truth and owning it. It's the id response of the superego of the Republican Party. It's the essence of all the other responses, just not dressed up. To paraphrase, "Yes, it's a hypocritical power grab and I'm proud of it!"
Of course, these same tough guys would cry into their ice cream cones if Obama so much as looked cross-eyed at a cat.
Any abuse needs to be met with an equal and opposite reaction. So buckle up!
September 21, 2020
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Chief Joseph left us on this day in 1904.
"The winds which pass through these aged pines we hear the moaning of departed ghosts, and if the voice of our people could have been heard, that act would never have been done. But alas though they stood around they could neither be seen nor heard. Their tears fell like drops of rain."
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Pretty good seats tonight, thanks to Penske. You can see my bald head in the background when left-handed hitters hit.
September 21, 2022
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Maybe Kyle Schwarber is a genius. He's hitting below .200 which would generally mean he's awful, but he has 45 home runs, somehow about the same number of singles, about hundred RBIs, walks, and runs scored. But again .. he's only hitting .200!
Here's the thing, if he was hitting .250, nobody would think anything of it. What many people don't realize is that the difference between hitting .200 and .250 is only one hit in every 20 at-bats (4 vs 5).
It seems like he's sacrificed that one extra hit in 20, swings harder, strikes out a lot, but is near the lead league in every key offensive categories. Bizarre. Perhaps a paradigm shift?
September 21, 2023
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Paul Simon, on Bye Bye Love by the Everly Brothers, from Ken Burns' Country Music:
"I went to buy Bye Bye Love right after I heard it. There wasn't any record store in my immediate neighborhood, so I had to take a bus and another bus, two buses to get to record store. Bought it, came home, put it on my player, loved it, flipped it over, played the other side, played it, loved it, went to play it again, scratched the record. Just mortified. (Shaking his head.) Got back on the bus, took the second bus, went and bought another record. Couldn't even like wait for the next day. Couldn't wait to have it again. I mean this was like an hour ride. And then an hour ride back. And then I played it for Artie and we tried to figure out how they were singing."
Dear readers, anecdotes don't get better than that.
September 21, 2019
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I'm in a hotel halfway to Indiana, and my car no longer goes in reverse. It clunked the last few times I put it in reverse and seemed to rev a bit high before going into 2nd gear. It's old- 210k miles, a 98 Saturn. Getting it checked in the morning...weighing whether I should go home or continue on. I can deal with no reverse, but if the forward goes out too I might be in trouble. Any insight?
September 21, 2017
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From a list of the 50 best opening lines of fiction books. Rick Bass, “The Hermit’s Story”:
“An ice storm, following seven days of snow; the vast fields and drifts of snow turning to sheets of glazed ice that shine and shimmer blue in the moonlight, as if the color is being fabricated not by the bending and absorption of light but by some chemical reaction within the glossy ice; as if the source of all blueness lies somewhere up here in the north—the core of it beneath one of these frozen fields; as if blue is a thing that emerges, in some parts of the world, from the soil itself, after the sun goes down.”
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We pick the things we wish were true, and then believe they are.
September 21, 2011
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Emma thinks my status updates are stupid.
September 21, 2009
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H. G. Wells was born on this day in 1866.
"Our true nationality is mankind."
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Stephen King was born on this day in 1947. Check out this story. You think it might make somebody a horror writer?
"The event occurred when I was barely four... According to Mom, I had gone off to play at a neighbor’s house - a house that was near a railroad line. About an hour after I left, I came back, she said, ‘as white as a ghost.’ I would not speak for the rest of the day. I would not tell her why I’d not waited to be picked up or phoned that I wanted to come home. I would not tell her why my chum’s mom hadn’t walked me back, but had allowed me to come home alone. It turned out that the kid I had been playing with had been run over by a freight train while playing on or crossing the tracks… My mom never knew if I had been near him when it happened. But I have no memory of the incident at all, only of having been told about it some years after the fact."
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Bill Murray was born on this day in 1950.
"Don't think about your errors and failures; otherwise, you'll never do a thing."
Good advice, particularly for Bill Murray!
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Arthur Schopenhauer left us on this day in 1860- "There is no happiness on earth to compare with that which a beautiful and fruitful mind finds in a propitious hour in itself."
Letting your mind wander is never wasted time!
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Roman poet, Virgil, left us on this day in 19BC.
"If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell."
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Frank Lantini left us on this day in 1966, presumably along with parts of his twin.
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Old Man Clanton, Walter Brennan, left us on this day in 1974.
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On this day in 2011, Lawrence Russel Brewer was executed by the state of Texas for a brutal hate crime. I'm not going to go into the details. Brewer's last meal was so elaborate, and he refused to take even one bite of it, thus ruining elaborate last meals for everyone to follow. They did away with them after Brewer.
The final elaborate last meal served by the state of Texas: two chicken fried steaks, triple bacon cheeseburger, cheese omelet, large bowl of fried okra, three fajitas, one pound of barbecue w/half loaf of white bread. a meat lovers' pizza; three root beers; one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream; and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
No last words were recorded.
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Other notable birthdays- Chuck Jones (1912), Ethan Coen (1957), Cheryl Hines (1965), Samantha Power (1970)
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David Cross, on the topic of "How many more innocent people have to die before we do something?"
He said he crunched the numbers and it's 1,076. The problem is that it's not cumulative, it has to be all at once. He suggests that we just pay somebody to do it, perhaps at the Kentucky Derby, with the same rationale that we dropped the bomb on hiroshima. Sure, we kill a lot of people all at once, but maybe for the greater good it's worth it. Maybe sacrificing 1,076 leads to a million lives saved.
Thank goodness this is comedy.
https://youtu.be/uY2hw1WCz6U
September 21, 2016
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RELIGION DISPATCHES, by ANDREW L. SEIDEL- TRUMP’S NOMINEE TO FILL RBG’S SEAT IS UNFIT. BY DEFINITION
"By taking part in a dishonest Republican power grab, the would-be justice admits that they are partisan and corruptible, not impartial and principled."
https://religiondispatches.org/trumps-nominee-to-fill-rbgs-seat-is-unfit-by-definition/
September 21, 2020
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If you read even one Bukowski poem today, you might want to make it, The History of One Tough Motherfucker
https://allpoetry.com/8509531
September 21, 2021
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Schopenhauer again, on expectations- "As a reliable compass for orienting yourself in this life, nothing is more useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place of atonement, a sort of penal colony. When you have done this, you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments and miseries of life as something irregular."
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Virgil again- "Fortune favors the bold."
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Bojack Horseman- “You don’t have to wait until September 21st to remember the 21st night of September. You can do that any time of the year, because that’s how memory works…Wait, how did we get on the subject of Earth, Wind, & Fire again?”
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Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People- "It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have about an equal amount of money and prestige—and yet one may be miserable and the other happy. Why? Because of a different mental attitude. I have seen just as many happy faces among the poor peasants toiling with their primitive tools in the devastating heat of the tropics as I have seen in air-conditioned offices in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles."
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It's that time of year again for this timeless classic. Just perfect!
McSweeney's- IT’S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS, by COLIN NISSAN
"I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash."
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-season-motherfuckers
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Michel de Montaigne- "Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies."
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Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot- "But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you."
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