Chartreuse Memories and Death Fears

Woody Allen was born on this day in 1935. 

"There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

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Will Shutz, Profound Simplicity- "Sometimes my striving toward growth becomes the object of amusement to the part of me that is watching me."

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If you can't follow this simple advice, consider not going to the hospital if you get sick.

November 30, 2020

Postscript- The hypocrisy is still mind-boggling- deny it, get sick, fill up the hospital, while others about to get sick are still denying it

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Why is it that people yelling "fake news" believe the fakest news? That's rhetorical, but I bet the answer lies on the Halle-Bopp comet.

November 30, 2020

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Can I tell you something? That Taylor Swift Christmas song... I could listen to it all day. I love it. I couldn't tell you one other of her songs though. I got home yesterday, and it was halfway through that song. I sat in my car and listened to the rest of it before going in. Today I got in my car and the same song was on, but Wham was singing it. I thought, "Crap! If they're playing this song, they're not going to play my song for a long time!" Now it's MY song. But then I had an idea. I turned it to a different station, and guess what- the Taylor Swift song had just started, just that second. So either some station is likely to be starting it at any given moment, or maybe it was a... Christmas miracle??? Either way, I'll take it.

November 30, 2019

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Borowitz- Next year when Republicans in Congress tell 20 million Americans to give up their government healthcare, the correct response should be, "You first."

November 30, 2016

Postscript- I'm going off memory, but I think that's about how it went down, and then we kept it.

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Strange how perfectly they match the wall behind them.

November 30, 2013

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The Rumbula massacre occured on this day in 1941- the SS-Einsatzgruppen rounded up 11,000 Jews from Riga Ghetto and murdered them.

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Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch premiered 50 years ago today. It crosses my mind every single time I consider buying cheese that costs more than $3.

https://youtu.be/Hz1JWzyvv8A

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Jonathan Swift joined us on this day in 1667.

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

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Mark Twain joined us on this day in 1835.

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

Playwright and screenwriter, David Mamet, was born on this day too, in 1947. A true original.

"Always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember."

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Winston Churchill was born on this day in 1874. 

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

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Abbie Hoffman was born on this day in 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression.

"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

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Terrence Malick was born on this day in 1943. From The Tree of Life:

The nuns taught us there are two ways through life, the way of Nature and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.

Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.

Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.

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Mandy Patinkin was born on this day in 1952. No, I'm not going to quote him.

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Billy Idol was born on this day in 1955, exactly two months after James Dean died, with 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford at the top of the Billboard charts.

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Shane Victorino was born on this day in 1980, about a month after the Phillies won their first World Series Championship in franchise history. In 2008 he would help lead them to their second World Series Championship.

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We lost Yamamoto Tsunetomo on this day in 1719, a samurai turned Zen master, and author of the Hagakure.

"Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like. But it is important never to tell this to young people as it is something that would be harmful if incorrectly understood.”

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Director Ernst Lubitsch died on this day in 1947. At his funeral, Billy Wilder is reported to have said to William Wyler, “No more Ernst Lubitsch,” to which Wyler replied, “Worse, no more Ernst Lubitsch pictures."

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Evel Knievel left this on this day in 2007.

"I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could."

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George H.W. Bush died on this day in 2020. His letter to Bill Clinton as he left office:

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Shane MacGowan left us on this day in 2023, presumably for the place where streams of whiskey are flowing.

"When the world is too dark and I need the light inside of me, I go to the bar and drink 15 pints of beer."

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Cracked- 5 seemingly harmful things that make you live longer

Have a great weekend everybody! "In a 20-year study of 1,824 participants, people who had one to three drinks a day were two times more likely to live longer than those who stuck with water and soda pop."

http://www.cracked.com/article_20142_5-seemingly-harmful-things-that-make-you-live-longer.html

November 30, 2012

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Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces:

"Tracey Hill was a child in a Connecticut town who amused herself as befitted a child of her age, like any other tender little angel of God in the state of Connecticut or anywhere else on this planet. One day, together with her little school companions, Tracey started throwing lighted matches into an anthill. They all enjoyed this healthy childhood diversion. Tracey, however, saw something which the others didn’t see or pretended not to, but which paralyzed her and remained forever engraved in her memory: faced with the dangerous fire, the ants split up into pairs and two by two, side by side, pressed close together, they waited for death."

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Live Science- Good Sports: Longer Lives Linked to Swimming, Racquetball

Huh, and all this time I thought I was tempting death... turns out I have a 47% greater chance of not dying young.

https://goo.gl/ZI2ftE

November 30, 2016

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Newsweek- Kellyanne Conway Will Run White House's Opioid Crisis Efforts

I'm assuming this means that she's going to spin it that there isn't really a problem. That's her expertise, right? Crisis resolved!

http://www.newsweek.com/kellyanne-conway-lead-white-house-opioid-crisis-efforts-726249

November 30, 2017

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Washington Post Opinion- Lies, lies and more lies: This is not how innocent people act

That is a lot of lies, dissembling, concealing and misleading! Not how innocent people act, for sure... and that's no lie.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/11/30/lies-lies-and-more-lies-this-is-not-how-innocent-people-act

November 30, 2018

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Every once in a while I'm irresistably compelled to remind everyone that Werner "Mr. Paisley Underpants" Herzog was once shot on camera during an interview. We should all be so nonchalant.

https://youtu.be/HrRNM9cMBDk

November 30, 2019

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CNN- World’s first living robots can now reproduce, scientists say

Nothing to see here folks...

https://cnn.it/3FTFut6

November 30, 2021

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Garry Shandling- "I went to my doctor and told him, "My penis is burning." He said, "That means somebody is talking about it.""

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Voltaire- "Prejudices are what fools use for reason."

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Jon Stewart- "If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies."

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Evel Knievel, with his answer to The Problem of Evil. (The Problem of Evel?)

"If you don't know about pain and trouble, you're in sad shape. They make you appreciate life."

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Sagan- "You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals."

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Vonnegut- "People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes."

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Oscar Wilde left us on this day in 1900, and I'll leave you with this quote of his, from The Canterfield Ghost:

"Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is."

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The beginning of Manhattan. When I first watched this in 1993 it blew me away, opened up the world.

Chapter 1.

He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion...no, make that: he - he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yeah. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.'

Uh, no let me start this over.

'Chapter 1.

He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles...'.

Ah, corny, too corny for my taste. Can we ... can we try and make it more profound?

'Chapter 1.

He adored New York City. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in...'

No, that's going to be too preachy. I mean, you know, let's face it, I want to sell some books here.

'Chapter 1.

He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage...'

Too angry, I don't want to be angry.

'Chapter 1.

He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.'

I love this.

'New York was his town, and it always would be.