Relax and Enjoy the DecoRATions

One of my favorite photographs, by Dorothea Lange. Amarillo, TX on Route 66, Oklahomans' exodus for California. Apparently some weren't lucky enough to take cars, and billboards mocked them for not taking trains. Western clouds, in black and white, get me every time.

December 9, 2020

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"Hmmm, who would best represent my case in front of the Supreme Court??? I know, Lyin' Ted!!! I accused him of fraud when he won the Iowa caucus in 2016, so nobody knows more about me lyin' about fraud that him!"

December 9, 2020

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If anybody wants to see where we could be heading, read the comments on his post. Nobody was giving him 97% odds on election night. I would have taken that bet with everything I own... and I'm a cautious guy. A liar is going to lie though, and the Big Lie in this example is that he thought all voting should end at midnight... just total nonsense and contrary to every state's election law. Violence is going to follow from this mindless rhetoric, but how much? I don't even blame him, his enablers deserve the blame. Without them he's just a crazy person on the street corner, begging for spare change to throw at pigeons.

Trump tweet- At 10:00 P.M. on Election Evening, we were at 97% win with the so-called “bookies”.

Total nonsense.

December 9, 2020

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"We're all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They're all victims. Every one of you."

Anyone else concerned about the guy conducting these angry populist rallies, fomenting feelings of victimhood, disenfranchisement and hatred, while fixating on tossing out millions of votes for his opponent based on non-existent fraud like he's done in the past, all at the same time he's replacing Defense Department officials with cronies that he's preparing to pardon?

December 9, 2020

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Margaret Atwood- "This above all, to refuse to be a victim."

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What does Giuliani have against Biden anyway? 

I forgot that Biden landed perhaps the most stinging political zinger of the 21st century against Giuliani... saying that a sentence to Giuliani consisted of a noun, a verb, and 911. I got goosebumps when he said it. I forgot all about that.

December 9, 2019

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My kids seem suspicious of the way I sing Frosty the Snowman- "with the corncob pipe and a butt and nose..."

Honestly, I thought it would be easier to trick them. I've been working on this for years.

December 9, 2018

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Walt Whitman- "Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself;

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

I both love and hate that quote, which confirms it, which makes me love it. And since I love it, and also love consistency, I therefore hate it. I guess I both love and hate both loving and hating it.

December 9, 2017

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Gretel asked me where we lived when she was a baby. I told her that we lived in our house, on our block, in Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, in the United States, on planet Earth, in our solar system, in the Milky Way, in our universe. We were driving, and she kept asking, "Are we still in the Milky Way? Are we still in the Milky Way? Are we still in the Milky Way?" That's much more pleasant than asking, "Are we there yet?"

December 9, 2017

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Remember this holiday season, keep the RAT in Christmas DecoRATions.

December 9, 2016

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Holy guacamole! Half pallet of avocados on the free skid at work.

December 9, 2016

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Let's assume for a second that Santa is real. Certainly those reindeer died centuries ago.

December 9, 2014

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I think American Horror Story is the epic ghost story I've been waiting for my whole life.

December 9, 2012

Postscript- Turns out it was The House On Haunted Hill like 10 years later.

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The Virgin of Guadalupe first appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City on this day in 1531. 

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The Nuremberg trials began on this day in 1946 with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

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The Kecksburg UFO incident happened on this day in 1965. A fireball was seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; with witnesses reporting something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh.

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John Milton join us on this day in 1608. From Areopagitica:

"A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

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Russian Revolutionary, Peter Kropotkin, join us on this day in 1842. From Memoirs of a Revolutionist:

"Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact that the memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation, and is transmitted again to the children. Is that not an immortality worth striving for?"

My answer, no. Woody Allen said that instead of living in the hearts of his countrymen he'd prefer to go on living in his apartment.

"Don't compete! — competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!"

Huh, I simultaneously disagree with that, and have to accept that's the exact model of the business I worked at now for 14 years.

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Blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, was born on this day in 1905. From Johnny Got His Gun:

"Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen."

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Kirk Douglas was born on this day in 1916. No Kirk Douglas, no Stanley Kubrick.

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Redd Foxx join us on this day in 1922, he would have been a hundred years old today.

"I'm callin' you ugly, I could stick yo face in some dough and make some gorilla cookies."

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Buck Henry joined us on this day in 1930. From The Graduate:

"I just want to say one word to you-just one word ..."plastics!" ... There's a great future in plastics."

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Morton Downey Jr. joined us on this day in 1933. He's the one who started this whole thing, isn't he? 

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Dick Butkus joined us on this day in 1942. With a name like that, you're going to end up tough!

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John Malkovich joined us on this day in 1953. I often think about a script ending up on his desk titled Being John Malkovich, somehow he's intrigued enough to read it versus throwing it straight in the trash, and it turns out it's a freaking gem.

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Juan Samuel was born on this day in 1960. I still throw a baseball like him. Sidearm, so much more natural.

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Nobody famous died on this day!

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Riding my exercise bike while watching West Side Story tonight, I really got into Officer Krupke. It really heats up around 2:50. Or maybe I'm distoibed!

https://youtu.be/j7TT4jnnWys

December 9, 2009

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Huffington Post- Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

"Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html

December 9, 2009

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Huffington Post- Fox News' Fuzzy Math Claims 120% Of Americans Have An Opinion On 'Climategate'

Forget about the 120% for a second, the funny thing about this is that "somewhat likely" is equivalent to "somewhat unlikely" but they don't give that option.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/fox-news-fuzzy-math-claim_n_384308.html

December 9, 2009

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Bennett School for Girls in Millbrook, NY, demolished in 2022.

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Wired- A neuroscientist's radical theory of how networks become conscious

Interesting article... good questions by Wired.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/15/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness

Dec 9, 2013, 6:35 PM

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IFLScience- Meet The Mice Whose Brains Are Part Human

So do they have souls? Should they worship the scientists who created them? If they decide to pray how will they know which way to face toward Mecca?

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/mice-part-human-brains-are-smarter-their-peers

December 9, 2014

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Sydney Morning Herald- I study liars. I've never seen one like President Trump

"By telling so many lies, and so many that are mean-spirited, Trump is violating some of the most fundamental norms of human social interaction and human decency. Many of the rest of us, in turn, have abandoned a norm of our own - we no longer give Trump the benefit of the doubt that we usually give so readily."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/i-study-liars-ive-never-seen-one-like-president-trump-20171208-h01q54.html

December 9, 2017

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Snowman- Sia. A knockout.

https://youtu.be/mVLEd2mqqy8

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On this day in 1982. I remember seeing this article at my grandparents when I was 8 years old.

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Financial truism: People who have enough money are rich, and people who need more are poor. Some of the wealthiest people are poor, and some with the least amount of wealth are rich. 

In Ken Burns' American Buffalo, some descendants of the Lakota, or maybe the Kiowa, said that when the buffalo were plentiful, they were the richest people on earth.

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Joan Didion, Blue Nights- "Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember."

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Horace- "Having no business of his own to attend to, he busies himself with the affairs of others."

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Voltaire- "To hold a pen is to be at war."

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Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five- "If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."

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Sagan- "Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing."

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John Stewart- "You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena."

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Woody Allen- "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."

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Twain- "Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."

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Bryson- "It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours—arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don't. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment's additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be."

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Kinison- "I like Jesus, I just felt sorry for his Disciples. Those guys had the roughest job in the world cause they could never call in sick. They could never go "Shhh shhh, yeah I know, I'll talk to him, it'll be alright..." [ring, ring... Jesus picks up] "[coughing...] Yeah listen Jesus. Yeah listen four or five of us went fishing last night and we forgot our sweaters. Yeah we're coming down with a cold or something. Yeah we're not going to be able to walk to Jerusalem with you today... What? What we're healed? But you're not here, ohh you don't have to be here you can say the word and we're healed? I didn't know that. Yeah every body is up. Yeah be good OK. We'll see you in about ten minutes alright. OK thank you, alright so long. Come on guy let go... we're healed."

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Steven Wright:

"It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it."

"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."