Sapiens Being Sapiens, Comedians Dying For Our Entertainment
On this day in 1997, Chris Farley died. Seems impossible that's such a lively presence could leave us. I saw him in person one time, in New York City outside David Letterman's studio just after one of his appearances. He made a point to entertain a small crowd that I was a part of. That would have been in 1995, so he had 2 years left. He was certainly on something, effectively dying for all of us, in that moment he was dying for me. Dying for my sin of wanting to be entertained? A comic Jesus?
Nah, it's simpler than that. He was just a meteor that burned a little bit too bright before blinking out.
Not a more fitting tribute than Adam Sandler's:
https://youtu.be/Tp2qkhHU0Mw
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I listened to about 5 minutes of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari in the car with my kids and they started asking me all kinds of questions about how our brains work, when people became people, why we choose one thing instead of another, how there could have been a Big Bang if there was nothing before it- questions that boil down to some of the best in all of science and philosophy.
On the Big Bang question they told me how some of their friends just think it was God, and they went into why they thought that was an unsatisfactory answer, basically just plagiarizing Ricky Gervais's joke:
The universe could not have just come from nothing. God must have created it.
Where did God come from?
He's always been around.
Plagiarism might be strong. It's more like Darwin and Wallace on evolution, or Newton and Leibniz on calculus. Ricky Gervais and my kids each came up with it independently. Half credit all around.
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Every time I go to PetSmart I imagine the work day of the person who came up with the name.
8:00am clock in.
Thought process: "Okay, I need to come up with a name for a pet supply chain. Pet Market? No. Smart Pet Supplies? No. Pet Mart? I feel that's close. Pets Mart... Pet Smart... PETSMART!
8:00 clock out.
December 18, 2021
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I'm confused on this vote on the 2nd Article of Impeachment against Trump. It's currently 229 to 197, so he's impeached on it, but shouldn't it be 426-0,? It's just that 197 SUPPORT him obstructing Congress (thus not even making his own case for innocence.) It's like if somebody robs a bank, the accused doesn't even show up, 197 of 426 jurors agree they did it, but they are also cool with it.
December 18, 2019
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Ladies and gentleman, a message from your president. It's not like we didn't know the guy loves money! Loves the stuff, can't get enough. Anybody up for a Go Fund Me to make a trail of dollar bills from the White House to Trump Tower? Then once he's inside, lock it up.
December 18, 2017
Postscript- It was clear at the time and even more clear and retrospect that the presidency was a money grab for that guy. I actually prefer that to someone obsessed with ideology.
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Sure music has had a rough death year, but film got off pretty light... Gene Wilder and Abe Vigoda. (So far.)
December 18, 2016
Postscript- We we're like a week away from losing Carrie Fisher followed up with Debbie Reynolds.
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Can Canada please hack tomorrow's electoral college election and change the results to anything else...if for no other reason than to see how peacefully Trump would handle it. We could see if he believes in other nations influencing our elections in principle or only when it benefits him.
December 18, 2016
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From Dan Rather's post:
In 1969, as Congress was debating a costly particle accelerator to study seemingly abstract physics, the director of the Fermilab, Robert Wilson, was asked in a hearing whether the research might be applicable for military purposes. His famous reply stands not only as a potent symbol of his age, but a North Star by which we must continue to steer our ship of state.
" ...this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending."
https://www.facebook.com/24085780715/posts/pfbid026wdDaYNSEVL9HY89JBskFKFssenTZCC1yvvS6JuAxxQN61YUMfa8tFTDvFJjZN5cl
December 18, 2016
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Trump- "We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!"
If you want some insight into Trump's psychology- he kept misbehaving in his adolescence and at 13 his parents sent him to a military academy. He hasn't progressed emotionally from that point on.
December 18, 2016
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Read an article recently about interesting tidbits about Star Wars that you've never considered before. The best one- if Star Wars really did happen along time ago in a galaxy far, far away, you might be able to look through a telescope and see it in our present, based on the time it takes light to reach us.
December 18, 2015
Postscript- I've often had the same thought!
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First trip to the library.
December 18, 2013
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I don't know who this Parson Brown character is, but I'll bet he's either obese, very white, or had his nose eaten by a rabbit.
December 18, 2011
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I watched an episode of Happy Days last night for the first time in years. Mr. C. said that Rich's beatnik friends better not be smoking those "funny cigarettes" upstairs. Whenever I heard that when I was young I imagined that they were cigarettes shaped like silly straws.
December 18, 2009
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Saki, British short story writer, Saki, was born on this day in 1870.
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
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Other notable birthdays- Joseph Stalin (1878), Ty Cobb 1886), George Stevens (1904), Keith Richards (1943), Steven Spielberg (1946), Leonard Maltin (1950), Brad Pitt (1963), Sia (1975), Katie Holmes (1978), and Billie Eilish (2001).
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The journalist Heywood Broun left us on this day and 1939.
"The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins."
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Two years after Chris Farley we lost another legend of the cinema, and perhaps the exact opposite of Chris Farley- the austere Robert Bresson.
"Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden."
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Zsa Zsa Gabor, of Gilligan's Island fame, left us on this day in 2016.
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Have a spare two hours? Join me in watching this debate between Hitchens and D'Souza. I'd like to know what you think.
https://youtu.be/9V85OykSDT8
December 18, 2011
Postscript- Know what I think? Torture.
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Far Out- John Lennon's favourite film of all time
I don't know if this was buried deep in my subconscious or something... but I read the headline and guessed that it was the Jodorowsky film Holy Mountain. I was wrong, but the answer was his prior film, El Topo! Wow. (If you haven't seen them, see them.)
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/john-lennon-favourite-film-of-all-time/
December 18, 2021
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Bill Burr, on taking baths:
https://fb.watch/hudeoQJ48x/?mibextid=NnVzG8
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Saki again- "The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went."
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Woody Allen- "The heart wants what the heart wants."
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George S. Patton- "Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."
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Mark Twain- Huckleberry Finnh "All right, then, I'll go to hell."
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Bill Hicks- "I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking and screaming into the White House."
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Arthur C. Clarke- "How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.""
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Vonnegut, Mother Night- "Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."
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Kant- The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
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Steven Wright:
I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it.
I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote", so right before I die I could say "unquote".
Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!
The speed of time is one second per second.
My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon's appointments.
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