Chocolate Mouses, Colorful Coats, and The Meaning of Life

Joseph Campbell left us, in a sense, on this day in 1987.

"Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer."

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Scrabble is one way I monitor any possible cognitive decline. Once I see my numbers start slipping, trouble. I just had a rack with A, A, C, I, S, T and a blank. To get a bingo, I had to find an eight-letter word, with my seven letters tying into either and E or an R at the end. There's only one and I found it! I think I'll be OK for at least a few more years. Care to guess what it is?

October 30, 2023

Answer in the addendum.

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Babe Ruth's father owned a bar and his mother cheated on him with one of the bartenders. His father got a lawyer and had the bartender sign this affidavit:

"I the undersigned fucked Mrs Geo. H, Ruth March 12 1906 on her dinging room floor whitch She ask me to do."

Brutal!

October 30, 2021

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Reflect on the fact that just this week Trump said that he was smart to get out of a $280 million loan on some failure of a real estate project. If we were all that smart, the country would be down $100 quadrillion! I can hear him now, "That's only a tiny fraction of my net worth!"

October 30, 2020

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How about this for a dirty trick? The Minnesota election board has been saying they will count ballots postmarked up to the election and received up to 8 days after. So people were planning on that, but yesterday a federal appeals court reversed their decision. 

Based on the timing of that decision, they disenfranchised voters who already voted by mail. Add to this, the fact that Trump slowed down the mail by tearing out high volume sorting machines. This is a dirty trick with a complicit federal appeals court.

It's becoming clear that there will be two sets of results from this election. There will be a set of murky-at-best results stemming from a bunch of judges' decisions. And there will be a clear result- the tally of ballots cast before or on Election Day, proving the will of the voters beyond a shadow of a doubt. We all need to hope they lead to the same result!

We should always believe in principle that when the will of a voter is known, the ballot counts. As long as it's on or before election day, everything else is secondary. All this monkeying around with the rules this close... the ulterior motive is palpable.

I was always under the impression that voters decided elections and not judges. I have a feeling the band of Constitutional Originalists or the Supreme Court disagree with me.

October 30, 2020

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The good news is, and I think everyone can agree, that if Trump wins we deserve it. (Either we voted for him, or didn't do enough to stop him.)

October 30, 2016

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The idea to have trick or treating the night before Halloween is a practice designed by a moron. Does he pretend the day before his birthday is his real birthday? Or that Christmas Day is Christmas Eve? Mondays and Thursdays are the weekend? AM is PM? Feet are hands? That mirrors reverse up and down instead of left and right? Or is his motive more sinister? Is he trying to keep our costumed kids off the streets on Halloween so we don't confuse the evil spirits? Stay away from him, whoever he is.

October 30, 2015

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There's gotta be a limit, right?

October 30, 2013

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Attention psychopaths- the days are numbered if you want to cut the baby out of Emma's belly! (Manson isn't coming up for parole is he?)

October 30, 2013

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There's only one thing I'm trying to figure out- why there is something rather than nothing.

October 30, 2012

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Sloth accidentally referred to something as being "fool-safe," evidently a mix between foolproof and fail-safe. Now I just need to work on a fail-proof way of getting it into the popular lexicon!

October 30, 2012

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My first two plays in a scrabble game were FERNIEST and TOADISH. I'd think I was cheating.

October 30, 2011

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Recognizing the desire for oneness is itself an admission of knowledge of dualities.

October 30, 2011

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Nat Turner was arrested on this day in 1831 for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

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Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds on this day in 1938, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States.

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On this day in 1946, Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signed a contract for Branch Rickey to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the baseball color line.

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Dolly Parton released Coat of Many Colors on this day in 1971.

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Second president John Adams joined us on this day in 1735.

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Calvacade of quotes in the addendum.

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Ezra Pound was born on this day in 1885.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him."

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Ruth Gordon was born on this day in 1896.

Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's Baby- "As long as she ate the mouse, she can't see nor hear. Now sing."

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Cinematographer of Days of Heaven, Néstor Almendros, was born on this day in 1930. It's arguably the most beautiful film ever photographed.

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Henry Winkler was born on this day in 1945.

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Steve Allen left us on this day in 2000.

"If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers."

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Randall Adams died on this day in 2010, the death row inmate featured in The Thin Blue Line. Evidence presented in it led to his death sentence to be overturned. It was billed as the first murder mystery film to ever solve a crime. Of course he ended up suing Errol Morris.

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Another notable birthday- "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff (1949)

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Other notable deathdays- Joseph Babinski (1932), Terry Southern (1995), Anton LaVey (1997)

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The Telegraph- David Lynch: mild at heart

'The late writer David Foster Wallace defined the word “Lynchian” as referring to “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter”. And this seems a pretty accurate description of my morning at Lynch’s house.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/8836073/David-Lynch-mild-at-heart.html 

October 30, 2011

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Mitch Hedberg on candy bars, in honor of Halloween Eve...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ensr4fX7U

October 30, 2015

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The Onion- Lone House With No Halloween Decorations By Far Spookiest In Neighborhood

http://onion.com/1M15ZtT

October 30, 2015

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Trump said it himself, a big red wave is coming!

https://youtu.be/HNnCL0q3EuI

October 30, 2020

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Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked in his home with a hammer. Maybe Trump's 500 hate-filled rallies had something to do with it. He popularized demonization as a policy substitute.

Violent threats against politicians went up 10 times since Trump.

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Marcus Aurelius- "Practice even what seems impossible."

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Aristotle- “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

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Rod Serling- "It isn't enough for a sole voice of reason to exist..."

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Oscar Wilde- "I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

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Ayer- "I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it."

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Lebowitz- "Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw."

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Norm MacDonald- "My wife dresses up like a nurse; then, I dress up like a nurse, also. And then, we don't even have sex, either. We just sit behind this huge, semicircular wooden desk and get annoyed when people buzz us for juice."

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Addendum

John Adams- "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

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John Adams (Treaty of Tripoli?)- "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

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John Adams- "Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it."

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John Adams- "I say, that Power must never be trusted without a check."

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John Adams- "To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse."

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John Adams- "Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."

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John Adams- “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

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John Adams- “Defeat appears to me preferable to total inaction.”

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John Adams- “Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”

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John Adams, in a letter to his son Charles- “Move or die is the language of our Maker in the constitution of our bodies.”

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John Adams- “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

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John Adams- “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”

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John Adams- “Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”

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John Adams- “The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”

Perhaps virtue is important in a president?

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John Adams- “What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people.”

Perhaps the only good revolution already exists in the minds of the people.

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John Adams- “Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”

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John Adams- “Tyranny can scarcely be practiced upon a virtuous and wise people.”

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John Adams, in a letter to Abigail- "Human nature with all its infirmities and depravation is still capable of great things. It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to a excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. . . . But their bodies must be hardened, as well as their souls exalted. Without strength and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured.”

Is there better parenting advice than that?

Addendum:

FASCIATE