Howling Practice, and Grandma Dynamite

We lost Ava Gardner on this day in 1990. 

“I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.” 

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Having a great week off of work. I've just been home reading all day. 

I finished a few books I've been reading for a long time- Truman Capote's Music For Chameleons, and Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear. 

I started and gave up on a few books I thought I was destined to love but then didn't enjoy- Hitchens' books on Orwell and Thomas Paine, and Stephen Pinker's Words and Rules. 

I'm still in the middle of a few books I love- Flannery O'Connor's short stories, more Capote short stories, an old paperback titled The World's Weirdest Cults, Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, and Stephen Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. 

And every night after everyone else goes to bed, I've been watching 2 or 3 hours of The Sopranos. I watched the whole series about 15 years ago and fortunately forgot almost everything. 

As far as I'm concerned, this is a good way to live. Except I could probably do without the mob-related nightmares.

January 25, 2024

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It drives me crazy that both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens seem poised to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in about a half hour.

Update- justice prevailed!

January 25, 2022

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Man, if there's one witness who could clear up this whole impeachment hoax, it's Trump himself. I'm sure a quick back and forth with a skilled prosecutor would completely exonerate him. And everybody knows he has nothing to hide. I don't know, I guess he must be scared or something. Too bad, it would be big, big ratings!

"Impeachment hoax"... a funny term, almost suggesting that something that did happen, in fact did not happen. It reminds me of the joke about the drunk who pukes all over the front of his shirt at the bar and goes home and has to explain it to his wife. But instead of the hilarious punchline he just says, "Oh this? It's just a regurgitation hoax."

January 25, 2020

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The best thing about this shutdown ending is that all the people get to go back to work and avoid getting kicked out of their houses, and we didn't have to agree to a big, dumb, wasteful wall to do it. The second best thing might be whatever Ann Coulter says about Trump tonight when she's on Bill Maher.

January 25, 2019

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Imagine that you're arrested for something, and that you know a friend of yours was being investigated for the same crime. If you knew your friend was innocent, would it cross your mind to tell people that you weren't going to flip on him??? Of course not. To say you won't flip implies that you know they are guilty too but that you won't testify to that fact.

January 25, 2019

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Vasili Arkhipov- remember that name. He was second-in-command on a Russian nuclear submarine and belied an order from his commander to nuke the US Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without him there could have been all out nuclear war.

At Nixon's worst moments in office his Secretary of Defense Schlesinger told those under him to only act on orders from him, not the president. 

Secretary of Defense Mattis could end up being another of the most important people in the history of the world. He has a personal library of 10,000 books. A small comfort on the brink of possible chaos. It's reported that Trump doesn't read.

January 25, 2017

Postscript- Seriously, what kind of thanks do we owe all of Trump's Secretaries of Defense and National Security Directors???

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I need to watch Oliver Stone's Nixon again. Nixon was in his 6th year as president when he descended Trumpian levels of paranoia and absurdity. Nixon had #stamina.

January 25, 2017

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Can we skip the preamble and usher in President Pence yet?

Dan Rather's excellent piece:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02y7zBhCHWLN9yPFiTm7o9p5t8UdjDijxoSAUwYZoZNRY1CjeXHA4TqeMWyyJcNCKul&id=24085780715&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

January 25, 2017

Postscript- It begins:

"In my mind there is no bigger story right now than the insistance by president Donald Trump that there were millions of illegal votes cast in the last election - and that’s saying something considering all that’s going on. The reason why this is such a bombshell is not because there is an any basis in truth for the story. It's precisely the opposite. These are lies of a magnitude and scale that they not only are crashing into a wall of facts and reason, but of sanity."

Damn, that seems somehow prescient, doesn't it???

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I just realized that "I'm voting" is an anagram for "vomiting."

January 25, 2017

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I'd like to see a poll done asking what percentage think Pence would be a better president than Trump- 80%, 90%? The thing about it too, he has to offer the Republicans a better chance in the midterm elections, and for the next presidential election. Seems like it's in everybody's best interest. (Maybe even Trump's.)

January 25, 2017

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Suited up, ready to go out tromping.

January 25, 2016

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I walked a monkey up to the dog park today.

January 25, 2015

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Loose bodies in my elbow! Looks like i'm probably getting my yearly racquetball-induced surgery done early.

January 25, 2013

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A 40-something year old black lady in the MRI waiting room told me I have a sexy Barry White voice. She told me to tell my wife she said that, but that I should say she was a 22-year old blonde, adding that it would make her so jealous I'd "be cool for a week." Seems somehow important to note that she mentioned that the kids refer to her as "Grandma Dynamite."

January 25, 2013

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"ALL Things Considered" NPR? Really? We all know you're commies, but it's shocking that you'd consider Nazism.

January 25, 2013

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Damn, I just read A Beautiful Child, a short story by Trump Capote about an afternoon he spent with Marilyn Monroe. I feel like I know her from that story. It's like we all know her though. I know I sound trite, and I don't care.

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On this day in 1890, Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

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On this day in 1934, in Tuscon, Arizona, John Dillinger and his gang were arrested during a hotel fire; firefighters recognize the gang from pictures in detective pulp magazines.

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Birthday of the first electronic game on this day in 1947, when Thomas Goldsmith Jr. filed a patent for his "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device."

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On this day in 1971, Charles Manson and four "Family" members were found guilty of the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders.

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Idi Amin lead a coup deposing Milton Obote on this day in 1971, becoming Uganda's president.

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During a historic visit to Cuba on this day in 1998, Pope John Paul II demanded political reforms and the release of political prisoners while condemning US attempts to isolate the country.

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On this day in 2014, I taught my two and a half month old daughter to howl!

https://www.facebook.com/ben.kreider.35/videos/10152013265018512/?mibextid=NnVzG8

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Notable birthdays- Robert Burns (1759), Virginia Woolf (1882), Sleepy John Estes (1899), Etta James (1938), Tobe Hooper (1943), Steve Prefontaine (1951)

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Other notable deathdays- Edmond Halley (1742), Al Capone (1947)

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A transcendent song - Mr and Mrs JW Baker - On the Banks of the Old Tennessee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnc4Fm5ZADE&sns=fb

https://youtu.be/rnc4Fm5ZADE

January 25, 2016

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Palmer Report- National Park Service launches unofficial Twitter account that Donald Trump can’t touch

My favorite:

What do we want?

Peer-reviewed Science

When do we want it?

Yesterday, please!

http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/national-park-service-creates-unofficial-twitter-account-that-donald-trump-cant-touch/1159/

January 25, 2017

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Entertainment Weekly- Trump 'does not read books': report

"I know books. I read the best books. They are really terrific. Everyone agrees. (Actually I read no books.)"

http://ew.com/books/2017/01/25/trump-does-not-read-books-report/

January 25, 2017

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The Hill- Trump White House senior staff have private email accounts: report

Don't worry, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable and psychotic explanation for him to essentially run against this exact issue and then embrace it.

http://hill.cm/VKcK0RH

January 25, 2017

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This podcast starts with Sam giving an eight minute commercial for meditation. Perhaps the best commercial I've ever heard. Almost immediately I realized that is critical for me (and perhaps everybody?) to start meditating.

https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information-war/

January 25, 2019

Postscript- Never did it! But I think I learned that when I'm watching baseball I'm kind of meditating.

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https://youtu.be/C78HBp-Youk

Mozart- Leck mich I'm Arsch

"Lick me in the ass."

It's meant as kiss my ass, versus something more lascivious. I guess that's what happens when 15-year-old kids write concertos. 

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Media Chomp- The Shopping Cart Theory Determines Moral Character

I am 100% on board with us! I swear that I've written about it already but can't find it anywhere. Anyone who abandons a shopping cart, is a deviant, not to be trusted, "a bad member of society." 

I was at Lowe's a couple years ago and a person did it right in front of me. I was raging inside. I used the experience in the moment as an exercise to remain calm, I wanted to do all kinds of ridiculous things to the person but held back.

Then after I got home, I realized I just should have put the card back! Wasn't I just as guilty? Sure, I was thrust into the situation, but the good thing to do would have just been to put it back.

Or maybe what I should have done, was followed the guy with it back to his car and put it right in front. Yeah, that's what I should have done!

https://mediachomp.com/the-shopping-cart-theory-determines-moral-character/

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Norm MacDonald

“There are two things which a man should scrupulously avoid: giving advice that he would not follow, and asking advice when he is determined to pursue his own opinion.”

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“Flattery succeeds best on minds previously occupied by conceit.”

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“There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed.”

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“Were there no fools, there would be no flatterers.”

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“They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it.”

Not too funny, right? Of course not, but his book Maxims and Moral Reflections was written back in 1827. Maybe we just don't get it.

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Christopher Hitchens- "I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness."

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Keep in mind, Rome wasn't conquered in a day.

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Jack London, The Road- “Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean—an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance”

I wonder if there are any downsides!

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Muhammad Ali- "It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am."

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Asimov- "I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so."

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Orwell- "In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four."

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Hunter S. Thompson- "Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a God, and the only living things that behave like they haven't got one."

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Attell- "Everyone was laughin’. Even that deaf mute boy was breathing heavy and pointing at me. Which is laughter to their kind."

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Hawking- "What did God do before he created the universe?"

Addendum 

Myspace Blog 

January 25, 2007

JESUS IS AWESOME

After parking at the I-81 southbound rest area in Cumberland County, I glanced over at the big rig next to me and my jaw dropped, honestly dropped. Air-brushed on the side of the sleeper-cab were the words "Jesus Is Our Driving Force" above a figure dressed like a gladiator. The name "Jesus Christ" was on his belt. He wore some minor armor, giant wings and a halo. A "justice scale" was in his left hand and a sword was in the right. The sword was raised and ready to be thrust downward into a scowling Satan who was pinned down by the neck with a gladiator boot. This was quite a sight, but I haven't told you what made my jaw drop. I have goosebumps thinking about it. It was Jesus' cherubic smile. Quite a start to my trip.

Over the next two days I listened to Black Boy by Richard Wright as I drove. It should be required reading for high school graduation, along with Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin (which I listened to last week.) How about this quote from Black Boy:

"Negroes are told in a language they cannot possibly misunderstand that their native land is not their own. And when they, acting on impulses that they share with the whites, try to assert a claim to their birthright, whites respond with terror, never pausing to consider the consequences should the Negroes ever give up completely. They never dream that they would face a situation far more terrifying if they were confronted by Negroes who made no claims at all, rather than those who are bullies of social aggressiveness. My knowledge of how Negroes respond to their plight makes me declare that no man can be individually guilty of treason- that an insurgent act is but a man's desperate answer to those who twist his environment so he cannot fully share the spirit of his native land. Treason is a crime of the state."

That Richard Wright had quite a life. He's the grandson of a former slave who fought for the Union army in the Civil War and was then gypped (yep, that's how you spell it) out of a pension. Richard nearly sold his dog for a dollar to buy food, is constantly misunderstood by everyone around him, lost job after job, was psychologically unable to fully submit to white authority, had no societal foundations (caring family, education, money, religion) but somehow he repeatedly maintained his dignity. He shunned religion, but is the most moral person of... perhaps the entire south. It's tough to hear in such detail the depths of southern white hatred. It's so easy for us to look back and see them as evil people, a concept that would be so completely foreign to them that they couldn't give it a second of honest reflection. Wright's reflection, however, is as timely today as it was then:

"Was I really as bad as my uncles and aunts and Granny repeatedly said? Why was it considered wrong to ask questions? Was I right when I resisted punishment? It was inconceivable to me that one should surrender to what seemed wrong, and most of the people I had met seemed wrong. Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one live in a world in which one's mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and tradition meant everything? There were no answers."

As I was driving along listening to this I went under an overpass that had the words "JESUS IS AWESOME" spray-painted on it. The definition of awesome: inspiring an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime. Did I mention that the J in Jesus was backwards? That would be an important fact to leave out.

No answers? I think Wright had an answer. The clues are everywhere.