Atomic Images, and the Universe Seeing Itself

The Corona Christmas tree palm tree commercial, has a commercial ever been more effective?

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I'm reading Werner Herzog's memoir, Every Man For Himself and God Against All. Here's a sentence you don't hear everyday.

"As far as I'm concerned, the twentieth century, in it's entirety, was a mistake."

So does a memoir mostly set in the 20th century qualify as a mistake in itself, and if so, what exactly is going on here? I think his next book could be entirely about that sentence.

December 10, 2023

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Nikki Haley making sense on the news this morning- "Donald Trump brings us chaos. I have a different approach- no drama, no vendettas, no whining."

Yeah, she might be on to something there.

Trump might want to rethink his campaign slogan- "Trump 2024- MORE CHAOS, DRAMA, VENDETTAS, AND WHINING!!!"

Do you think we misheard him the first time and he wasn't talking about winning? Maybe it was meant to be like this:

"We're gonna whine so much, you may even get tired of whining. And you'll say, 'Please, please. It's too much whining. We can't take it anymore. Mr. President, it's too much.' 

Yeah, I think it might be too much whining. Not to mention chaos, drama and vendettas. Maybe someday we could forget about basic competence, and talk about the actual issues.

December 10, 2023

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I'll be goddamned if I wasn't considering buying a beat up old blue Snaggletooth at Mad Hatter Antiques today for $220.

December 10, 2023

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The most details image yet of an atom.

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I think in 2008 Obama believed in gay marriage, but when running for president only supported civil unions. If he had come out in support of gay marriage he might have given the election to McCain, it certainly would have only helped McCain. But once president Obama came out in support of gay marriage as president, the tide slowly turned leading up to the Supreme Court decision. I'm convinced that's the way to go for the Democrats is supporting the reformers versus the revolutionaries. I think the way to get revolutionary things done is through reform.

December 10, 2019

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Perhaps one of the strangest things about being a parent is that you can be fast asleep, hear your kid frantically exclaim they have to throw up, and within a half second you're running full speed down the hallway holding them like a football trying to make it to the bathroom in time.

December 10, 2018

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The Onion- Disciplinarian Parent Annoying Restaurant Much More Than Unruly Toddler Ever Could

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If you think that a single snowstorm disproves global warming, you might not be a meteorologist.

-Jeff Foxweathery

December 10, 2017

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Ah, Frosty the Snowman... the modern day parable of the ephemerality of the seasons as metaphor for the cycle of death and rebirth. This is for kids???

December 10, 2016

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Gretel didn't want to help me fix the furnace so I sweetened the deal by telling her that while we're in the basement she could help me clean the litter box too. She went for it.

December 10, 2016

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I never forfeited a scrabble until tonight, but the guy had two insane bingoes... must have been cheating. I messaged him- "ginzoes and piebald?" He wrote, "Why not?" The thing is- now I know those words and when I use them my opponent will think I'M cheating.

December 10, 2011

Postscript- With the benefit of 11 years of hindsight I think I'm on his side. Piebald is gretel's favorite kind of ball python, and the ginzoes isn't that much of a stretch.

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Now to wait until Emma isn't looking so I can sneak Yoda up on top of the Christmas tree...

December 10, 2011

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On the way back from a farmer meeting we stopped to look at a hearse for sale, considered delivering produce in it. Bought the Farm Produce Delivery, LLC. We'd sell all kinds of great things- no heartbeets, chard remains, antichoke-to-death, squashed, car-rots, lettuce rest in peace, a wide assortment of gangrenes, etc. What else should we sell?

December 10, 2011

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Anniversary of the funniest joke I ever made.

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From This Day In Country Music:

10 Dec 1996, Faron Young, American singer and songwriter from the early 1950s into the mid-1980s shot himself after apparently being depressed that the music industry had turned its back on him. He died in Nashville the following day. His hits included "If You Ain't Lovin' (You Ain't Livin')" and "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young." His ashes were spread by his family over Old Hickory Lake outside Nashville at Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash's home while the Cashes were away. 

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I played the soul out of my body at racquetball tonight. Afterward I walked around Dick's, and then around Target, and I felt like I was floating outside of myself but still looking out my eyes, bemused at the spectacle of Christmas shopping. I wasn't looking down on it, I was part of it. I was reminded of the Neil deGrasse Tyson thing, that we are each just a little piece of the universe that became aware of itself.

This is been a paid advertisement for Rigorous Exercise. 

December 10, 2022

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The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published on this day in 1768.

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William Faulkner, Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, from this day in 1949:

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

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Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War on this day in 1906. Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature on this day in 1953.

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The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London took place on this day in 1907, when 1,000 medical students, protesting against the existence of a memorial for animals that had been vivisected, clashed with 400 police officers.

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Emily Dickinson joined us on this day in 1830.

"Forever is composed of nows."

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Dorothy Lamour joined us on this day in 1914.

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Greg Giraldo was born on this day in 1965. 

"This homeless guy asked me for money the other day. I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol. And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on. Why am I judging this poor bastard?"

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Averrois left us on this day in 1198. Here he is somehow paraphrasing Yoda.

"Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation."

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Chief of the Oglala, Red Cloud, left us on this day in 1909. 

“I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”

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Walter Johnson left us on this day in 1946.

Ty Cobb- "His fastball looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed."

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Thomas Merton left us on this day in 1968.

"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

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Richard Pryor left us on this day in 2005. Here's Eddie Murphy imitating him:

You ever get like sometimes ye get on that toilet and ye shit, that water splash up on yo' ass? Don't that make ye mad, right? You know what really make mad is when the sh*t is halfway out, then go back up in that mothafocka. Why do sh*t be teasin' yo' ass? Just get the fuck out, right? You know what really make me mad is when yo' ass don' cooperate whicha then clinch up and break the sh*t in half? You be mad like a motherfucker too coz you gotta whip yo' ass for 5 hours. Use 12 roles o' toilet paper on that mothafocka. You know what really bother me is when you be strainin' for a long time and one lil' pebble shit comes out? Y' want some sh*t this big right? Stick yo' head up your ass and say: That all the sh*t I'm gonn' get mothafocka? And it's afterwards right, when you done with shit, you done all the shittin' you gonna do for the whole day and you flush that toilet and one chunk come back... WHAT DOES THAT CHUNK WANT?"

I might be wrong, but I think that's funnier than anything Richard Pryor ever said 

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Another notable birthday- Ada Lovelace (1815) 

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Other notable deathdays- Otis Redding (1967), Ed Wood (1978)

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W.B. Yeats- "Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

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Didion- "The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language."

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Voltaire- "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

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Stewart- "The internet is just a world passing notes around a classroom."

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Vonnegut, Timequake- "If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off."

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Sagan- "National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars."

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Woody Allen- Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem."

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Twain- "You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?"

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Not a burning bush, but pretty neat. Kind of mixing metaphors.

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Kinison- "The Russians haven't been to the moon. You know why? Because they're space pussies... You really want to impress us? Bring us back our FLAG!"

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Steven Wright:

"What’s the speed of dark?"

"Smoking cures weight problems…eventually."

"Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen."

"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."

"For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out."