Chop Shop Excursions

I just had minor surgery on my face to remove a small cyst. Beforehand, the surgeon gave me a rundown of what was going to happen. "First I'm going to clean you up, then I'm going to numb you up, then I'm going to chop you up, then I'm going to stitch you up, then we're going to bandage you up." 

Did he say chop? Yeah he said chop. 

At one point I asked what the burning smell was and he said, "Oh, that's just you." I don't I remember him saying anything about burning me up! 

I might request that guy for all my surgeries going forward.

November 4, 2021

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I'm glad Sam posted this clip, I was planning on transcribing it! 

And listen, I don't just want to point out how awful this guy is forever! But as long as he's demanding that we stop counting votes, he's supporting the disenfranchisement of voters. So he wants to act so ridiculously, it needs to be pointed out.

https://fb.watch/gAGSEWds1k/

November 4, 2021

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Nate Silver has Biden likely winning Arizona and Nevada. Consensus is growing that Biden won Wisconsin and Michigan, so that would do it! He has both Pennsylvania and Georgia as leaning for Biden. Arizona announces a batch of votes at 9pm. Might be exciting...

November 4, 2020

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It looks good for Biden! Assuming he wins the near certainties, he just needs to win Michigan, Wisconsin and the district in Nebraska. Pennsylvania is looking good for him too, and Georgia is tipped his way. He's significantly behind in some of the % totals but that's because a disproportionate amount of the city votes haven't been counted at this point. We just need to count the rest of the votes and see where they fall.

The Senate doesn't look great for the Democrats.

Of course Trump declared it a big win for himself. It is possible for him to win, but Trump doing this Trump stuff just seems funny now.

November 4, 2020

Postscript- Get this, people believed him!

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My new prediction: Biden will win Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Georgia and North Carolina will be very close but Trump win them. Biden would win 290-248! If that's not the total, I'm guessing Biden also wins Georgia and it's 306-232.

But the Senate looks like a problem.

November 4, 2020

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Sometimes the Scrabble tiles get pulled just right... I'm five moves into a game with 365 points, including pearler, relation, requiter, and wartiest on a triple-triple for 158.

November 4, 2019

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Oh my goodness, I was just downstairs watching TV at 2am and I heard Gretel coming down saying, "Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!" I thought she had a nightmare and I asked her what was wrong. She said something I hope I never forget- "Our greatest grandpa was a FISH." Evolution 101. I burst out laughing and she stood there on the steps in her pajamas beaming. I asked her why she told me that and she said, "It's just something I knowed." Haha! I took her back to bed and she fell right to sleep. 

To make everything more bizarre, when I came back downstairs the time had changed, it was only 1am. So now I almost feel like I have to wait an hour before that magic moment even happens.

November 4, 2018

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Someone just called me a "wise guy." I'm considering it a compliment.

November 4, 2016

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Jobless rate dropped to 4.9... Romney's GOAL was to get it under 6. Make America great again? Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich's argument- to many people it doesn't FEEL like the jobless rate dropped. What kind of a lunatic trusts feelings over facts???

The fact is, he's no dummy and he knows better. So why mislead? The better question, what will our punishment be if we trust feelings over facts?

November 4, 2016

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Thought experiment- imagine that Barack Obama's campaign tagline was "Make America Great Again," and imagine the Republican outrage. What do you mean America's not great???

November 4, 2016

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This guy Chris Matthews thinks there shouldn't be third party candidates because they mess up the race. So if it becomes a three-way tie in polls which one should drop out?

November 4, 2014

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Keep in mind, Hitler was elected.

November 4, 2014

Postscript- At least in a sense.

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If we bully bullies into not bullying, are we bullying the bullies?

November 4, 2012

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Election tips: 1. Convince a family member, workmate or friend from the opposite party that since your votes will cancel out anyway there's no point to you both wasting your time voting. 2. Repeat for the rest of your family members, workmates and friends from the opposite party. 3. Vote anyway.

November 4, 2012

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Yugen (Japanese)- An awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words.

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Who wants to play some tackle football this weekend?

November 4, 2009

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1791 The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.

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On this day in 1942, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel disobeyed a direct order by Adolf Hitler, began a 5 month retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein.

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Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees creating tools on this day in 1960, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.

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The Arno River flooded Florence, Italy, on this day in 1966, leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. 

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On this day in 2008, Barack Obama was elected president, a first for a half-white person.

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Will Rogers was born on this day in 1879.

"There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation.

The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

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Walter Cronkite was born on this day in 1916, the proverbial voice of his generation.

"America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system."

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Dick Groat was born on this day in 1930. I heard that Groat's Disease was named after him.

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Cinematographer, Frederick Elmes, was born on this day in 1946. He did Eraserhead, a bunch of other David Lynch films, and Jim Jarmusch films, along with Valley Girl (somehow), The Ice Storm, Storytelling, Synecdoche, New York... The Go-Go's Head Over Heels video, haha, and on and on.

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Quite a day for photographers, Robert Mapplethorpe was born the same day.

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Johnny Dickshot was a pro baseball player who started with Pirates in 1935. Yeah, that's a pretty ugly name, but it's not as ugly as his nickname. He was nicknamed "Ugly" because he considered himself the ugliest person in baseball. He left us on this day in 1997.

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Irish broadcaster, Gay Byrne, left us on this day in 2019. Try running it under cold water.

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I bet that Johnny Dickshot and Gay Byrne would have got a long famously.

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Other notable deathdays- Grover Cleveland Alexander (1950), Cy Young (1955), Sparky Anderson (2010)

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Seth Meyers compares the Trump versus Clinton scandals.

"Do you pick someone who’s under federal investigation for using a private email server? Or do you pick someone who called Mexicans rapists, claimed the president was born in Kenya, proposed banning an entire religion from entering the US, mocked a disabled reporter, said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured, attacked the parents of a fallen soldier, bragged about committing sexual assault, was accused by 12 women of committing sexual assault, said some of those women weren’t attractive for him to sexually assault, said more countries should get nukes, said that he would force the military to commit war crimes, said a judge was biased because his parents were Mexicans, said women should be punished for having abortions, incited violence at his rallies, called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, called for his opponent to be jailed, declared bankruptcy six times, bragged about not paying income taxes, stiffed his contractors and employees, lost a billion dollars in one year, scammed customers at his fake university, bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself with money from his fake foundation, has a trial for fraud coming up in November, insulted an opponent’s looks, insulted an opponent’s wife’s looks, and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy? How do you choose?"

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/3/13507626/seth-meyers-trump-clinton-scandals

November 4, 2016

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Want my prediction for 364 days from now? Trump wins. Look at these match-ups in key battleground states.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/11/the-2020-election-is-still-wide-open/

November 4, 2019

Postscript- Nice to be wrong. 

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I don't know, Trump declaring himself the winner just seems funny to me. So expected, so petty, so ridiculous. So dumb you pronounce the B, as some might say. Perhaps we should count all the votes and see who won before declaring a winner. All narrative, no facts. This reminds me of some excellent recent commentary by conservative writer Andrew Sullivan on Sam Harris's podcast:

"The manner of his politics in which the truth is entirely dispensable, that narratives are what really matter, that he can give campaign speeches which are essentially built on a complete fantasy about what is going on in the world. I mean covid is the clearest example, and that he's saying that it's over and we have succeeded at the same time that it is surging. You look at the last debate. I try to follow his arguments because I want to understand what he's saying, but they're just impossible to follow because they are built on complete lies and delusions, fake statistics, invented scenarios, complete hyperbole, done in a way that completely distorts any attempt at a rational debate, done as a resort to feelings essentially, tribal feelings, feelings of emotion that he seeks to evoke and to exploit in a way that our rational faculties are short-circuited, because how can you begin to counter-argue Trump when it's just a stream of inventions, entirely and always self-serving, combined with a constant attempt to trigger and inflame anybody who might conceivably take issue with it."

https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/223-october-30-2020/

November 4, 2020

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Beach Boys- Don't Worry Baby

Good advice. (And a how-to video on what to do with your hands when you have no idea what to do with them and want to look ridiculous.)

https://youtu.be/9Y-0nWVdBH4

November 4, 2020

Postscript- Dedicated to the time between the vote and everyone calling the election for Biden.

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Yuval Noah Harari, one of my favorite modern thinkers. His points tend to be basic, shocking, and very hard to disagree with. He says that modern technology has the power to make humans in 100 to 200 years as different from us as we are different from chimpanzees. Our descendants could be a new species very soon.

https://youtu.be/EIVTf-C6oQo

November 4, 2021

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Ricky Gervais- "I'm praying to God that he gives God the strength to stop Satan doing any bad stuff for ever. I don't know why no one has done this before."

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Edvard Munch- “My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.”

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Carl Sagan, Cosmos- "There is an idea - strange, haunting, evocative - one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, an infinite hierarchy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe. Within it, organized into the local equivalent of galaxies and smaller structures, are an immense number of other, much tinier elementary particles, which are themselves universe at the next level, and so on forever - an infinite downward regression, universes within universes, endlessly. And upward as well. Our familiar universe of galaxies and stars, planets and people, would be a single elementary particle in the next universe up, the first step of another infinite regress."

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Locke- "Revolt is the right of the people."

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Sam Harris"We will embarrass our descendents, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress."

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Wilde- "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."

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Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness- "The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, gardening, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness."

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Terkel- "Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely."

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Campbell- "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."

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Dennis Miller- "A recent police study found that you're much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run."

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Normie- "I don’t want fancy things. I don’t want fancy, smancy things. I don’t even want fancy, smancy, wancy things. What I want is to waste your time."

Addendum

Myspace Blog

November 4, 2007

questionnaire

Please answer each question in its entirety, except for the ones you wish to consider rhetorical.

1. Do you believe that after you die you'll still be alive in the past?

2. Is that a stupid question or is there something to it?

3. Have you noticed that if you leave batteries in a flashlight they'll be dead in a month, but if you find an old flashlight with batteries it usually still works a little bit? Battery conspiracy?

4. Would you like to shake the hand of the guy who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong?

5. Did you know that you can move objects with your mind? (For instance, your hand… or the remote control, by using your mind to move your hand to push the buttons. Remember that. You can use it to win a lot of bar bets. And you can also use it to get in a lot of bar fights.)

6. Is digital camouflage a conspiracy to get young people to see war as a video game? (Maybe that's the problem- instead of Osama bin Laden they're looking for Q-Bert.)

7. Do Christians believe in God or Allah? No, don't answer that, it's a trick question. The Arabic word for "God" is "Allah", so many Middle Eastern Christians believe in Allah. Did you know that, or is it one more thing the liberal media doesn't want to tell you?

8. Is atheism seen as a disbelief in god, or a disbelief in the correct god? Are Christian atheists to muslims and vice versa?

9. Would Bill O'Reilly become an insurgent to win his culture war? Would he kill to win the war on Christmas?

10. Would you rather be an athlete or an aesthete?

11. Can you support a single troop or is the statement "support the troops" crafted to depersonify individual soldiers?

12. Why do we remember the past and not the future?

13. Does that question seem more intelligent after I tell you that I plagiarized it from Stephen Hawking? (For those of you who don't know him, he's a glasses-wearing astro-nerd.)

14. Everyone knows that we've been dead for many, many years before we were born. What's your best guess at how many years?

15. If we go back googolplexes of Big Bangs (Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, etc.) into the past, will we eventually run into ourselves in a universe that was made exactly like ours, and if so, were we alive in the past before we were dead before we were born?

16. Reincarnation- bullshit or "the shit?"

17. The next time you want to say something is the opposite of bullshit, will you please say it is "bulltheshit"?

18. Did you know there are no appropriate synonyms for bullshit? Can you think of any?

19. Is it pretentious for a mathematician to assume that everybody knows what a googolplex is?

20. Have you noticed, as I have, that there are a lot more motorcycle daredevils popping wheelies on our nation's highways these days?

21. Did you hear that they just discovered why we yawn? Does this question make you sleepy? If so, go wrap a cool towel around your head.

22. Do you prefer the sarcastic "I could care less" or the literal "I couldn't care less"?

23. So which is it- a bald-faced lie or a bold-faced lie?

24. a. If you're given someone else's brain, are you still you?

b. If you have no brain, are you still you?

c. If you are defined by your brain activity and death is the absence of brain activity, are "you" ever dead? Aren't "you" necessarily alive? Couldn't you make the following truthful pronouncement- "I will never die!"?

25. What's your take on a couple who decides to only have two children so they only replace themselves, not further burdening the planet? Aren't they also responsible for their children's children? If so, how responsible?