Ancient Mansions of Mind and Reality

A Victorian mansion from the 1880’s. Imagine the pride they must have taken in it, and if they could see it now, 140 years later. I often think what my house will look like deep in the future, like the year 2163, or 1,000,000.

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Pretty good weekend. Gretel got a bearded dragon that she named Gizmo. It was free off Craigslist with a nice setup. Zuzu wasn't happy about the whole family having to drive to York. She wanted to stay home and asked why she had to come. I said that we were going too far away and something might happen like maybe we could get in a crash. We each looked at each other simultaneously and realized that was a pretty stupid reason... if there was a crash, of course it would be better if she stayed home. Also, I learned to play Ode to Joy on the xylophone, and then my kids each learned it much faster than me. 

A pop culture victory too- I didn't know who the Super Bowl halftime performer was until it began. On top of that, I don't know one Usher song.

February 11, 2024

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Finally finished reading this. 

Here's a smattering:

- there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe

- Darwinian natural selection happens wherever life exists in the universe

- there's no God

- there is a God

- there is nothing after death

- reality exists independent of human social constructs

- morality is the natural outcome of evolutionary and historical forces

- people gain advantage by believing in things they can't prove

- it's important to have faith in truth and justice and oneself and others

- true love

- we all have the same fundamental concepts, values, commitments and concerns

- we are in for climatic mayhem

- the truths I claim to know because they've been proven by others

- consciousness is all that exists

- language is a pre-condition of conscious thought

- cockroaches and simple animals are conscious

- there are moral truths discoverable as anything in math or science

- consciousness doesn't play a significant role

- there will always be things we don't know

- radiation emitted by mobile phones is harmless

- our universe is one of many

- we live in a draft version of the universe and there's no final version, when you meditate your consciousness spreads over several drafts

- time does not exist

- Zen is wrong, we should not live in the moment but rather in the anticipation of moments

Just last one, by Kai Kraus, captured my imagination. The Germans have a word for it, "vorfreud"- roughly translated as "anticipation of some joy or delight that's about to come."

February 11, 2018

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Major mistake yesterday... didn't buy either hat.

February 11, 2018

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Hey I have a great idea- extreme gun-vetting! A party that cares so much about keeping us safe would certainly support ensuring that deranged citizens can't get the weapons they could use to commit the very atrocities they fear deranged immigrants will commit. I'll look forward to that.

February 11, 2017

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Who says there's no moral progress? A hundred years ago Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control. Fifty-five years ago Lenny Bruce was arrested for making a joke about the Pope. What current linguistic abominations will our kids look back on in 50 years?

February 11, 2017

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John Fugelsang- "Karma is gonna build a wall around Donald Trump and make him pay for it."

That's about what happened.

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At the Democratic debate.

Sanders- I won't be seeking foreign policy advice from Henry Kissinger. I'm proud to say he's not a friend of mine.

Clinton- (paraphrase) I have seeked his advice, and I do consider him a friend.

Beginning and end of the conversation as far as I'm concerned.

February 11, 2016

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Carl Jung- “Deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or moral code.” 

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Gretel told what might have been her first joke this morning. She pointed at each of us and said, "baby monkey, me monkey, daddy monkey, mommy monkey."

February 11, 2016

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Being that the first white settlers of the west slaughtered vast herds of bison only to eat their tongues, I'm feeling strangely guilty for serving my cats bison tongue tonight.

February 11, 2012

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Is Castro right that his dictatorship over Cuba is a type of democracy since if there was enough public support, the people would overthrow him? Similarly, his overthrow of Batista would have been illegitimate without the overwhelming support of the public. I'm curious to hear your thoughts...

February 11, 2010

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The word gerrymandering entered the lexicon on this day in 1812, Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry is accused of it for the first time. They said that the district he manufactured look like a salamander.

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The word "robot" was coined on this day in 1938 when the BBC produced the world's first ever science fiction television programme, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R.

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Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa on this day in 1990.

Ricky Gervais- “My greatest hero is Nelson Mandela. What a man. Incarcerated for 25 years, he was released in 1990 and he hasn’t reoffended. I think he’s going straight, which shows you prison does work.”

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On the same day, 42:1 underdog Buster Douglas, knocked out Mike Tyson in ten rounds at Tokyo to win boxing's world Heavyweight title.

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On this day in 2006, Dick Cheney shot his hunting buddy in the face 

Al Franken- "Over the weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man in Texas. Asked why he shot the man, the Vice President said, "Just to watch him die.""

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Thomas Edison was born on this day in 1847. It's hard to imagine that one person invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the light bulb. 

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The terrible twosome, Tina Louise and Manuel Noriega, joined us on this day in 1934.

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Sarah Palin was born on this day in 1964.

Hitchens- "She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director."

Whoa.

Sam Harris's criticism is better.

"What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance . . . Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated."

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Jennifer Aniston, the actress famous for the Jennifer Aniston neuron that apparently lives in all of our brains, was born on this day in 1969.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/03/30/149685880/neuroscientists-battle-furiously-over-jennifer-aniston

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Other notable birthdays- Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909), Gene Vincent (1935), Burt Reynolds (1936), 1974 – Alex Jones (1974), Daniil Medvedev (1996)

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René Descartes left this one this day in 1650. Here he is plagiarizing Socrates.

"I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain."

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Sylvia Plath died on this day in 1963, by taping off the kitchen and sticking her head in the oven.

"Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call."

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The baseball player and manager Chuck Tanner left us on this day in 2011. 

"You can have money piled to the ceiling but the size of your funeral is still going to depend on the weather."

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Other notable deathdays- Sergei Eisenstein (1948), Sorrel Booke (1994), Whitney Houston (2012)

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Do yourself a serious favor and watch this. 

Guy Maddin's Sissy-Boy Slap Party

https://youtu.be/qmusLsA-jG0

February 11, 2010

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Carolina Ramblers String Band- That Lonesome Valley

https://youtu.be/NMpFR92KRrg

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Today, I consider myself... exactly as old as Lou Gehrig was the day he died.

http://dead.atyourage.com/

February 11, 2012

Postscript- Damn, I miss that site!

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I'm in the fifth week of a seven-week racquetball tournament. I'm doing pretty good... but I just found out the winner gets a t-shirt that says "RACQUETBALL CHAMPION." Time to get serious.

https://youtu.be/DP3MFBzMH2o

February 11, 2012

Postscript- I ended up getting like 10 of those shirts!

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The Atlantic- How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

A parasite in cat feces, when eaten by rats, manipulates rat brains and guides them back to cats... the next cat eats the rat, the parasite gets back into the cat belly and creates the next generation. And the parasite might manipulate human behavior too!

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/

February 11, 2012

Postscript- I've always wondered if something similar made me obsessive about hermit crabs!

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Huffington Post- Australia's Oldest Man Knits Tiny Sweaters For Penguins Injured In Oil Spills

There's a headline you don't see every day!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/australias-oldest-man-sweaters-penguins-oil_n_6660962.html

February 11, 2015

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All these leaks, the backbiting, rising tensions, war drums... it was bound to happen, someone leaked some documentary footage of what it's like working inside the White House these days.

https://youtu.be/qmusLsA-jG0

February 11, 2017

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The Hill- DNC candidate torches ‘draft-dodging chickenhawk president’

This is is of course the type of thing every single Republican in Congress would be saying if Obama was tweeting about his family business during a national security briefing. From the article:

“I’ll be damned if we’re going to have a draft-dodging chickenhawk president of the United States – who thinks he’s too smart to read his own intelligence briefings – ordering the people I served with back into another conflict because he can’t be bothered to do his job properly,” South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg said at a DNC forum in Baltimore.

http://thehill.com/homenews/319097-dnc-candidate-slams-draft-dodging-chickenhawk-president

February 11, 2017

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Cock Sparrer- Because You're Young

Because you're young, sharp as a knife

You need that buzz to come alive

Out on the edge, out on the town

You ain't got time to settle down

You're always sure, you're always right

You see it all in black and white

You never listen to anyone

Because you're young

Because you're young, you're torn between

A world of hate and a world of dreams

So much to lose, so much to gain

So much to fight for, so much to change

You don't look back, you don't look down

You gotta turn everything around

You live your life like a loaded gun

Because you're young

Stop talking back, get off the phone

You're late again, you missed the last bus home

This ain't the way you wanna live

I know something's got to give

You're always sure, you're always right

You see it all in black and white

You never listen to anyone

Because you're young

https://youtu.be/SNMjgBQVf8M

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Vivian Maier 

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Bertolt Brecht- "He who fights can lose. He who doesn't fight has already lost."

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F. Scott Fitzgerald- "To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens."

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Chris Rock- "Actually, I think all addiction starts with soda. Every junkie did soda first. But no one counts that. Maybe they should. The soda connection is clear. Why isn't a presidential commission looking into this? Or at least some guys from the National Carbonation Council."

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Steinbeck, East of Eden- "Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."

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H.L. Mencken, Minority Report- "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."

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Charlie Kelly- “Here's a confession: I'm in love with a man. What? I'm in love with a man... a man named God. Does that make me gay? Am I gay for God? You betcha.”

Addendum

1.

Myspace Blog

February 11, 2007

Helliday Inn

Through my job, I just stayed at a Holiday Inn in Wilkes-Barre for the first time. I tried to open the outside door to the breakfast room from the sub-zero wind-chill but it was locked. I stood there peeking in, confused. Everybody looked so warm. Nobody acknowledged me. I tried the door again. Still locked. Peeked in again. Everyone focused on their breakfast. "Fuck it, I'm leaving."

On the way back to my room I saw the other entrance. "Well, I am kinda hungry." I went in. Nobody was happy to see me. I stood by the eggs looking for plates. There weren't any. I looked all over. No plates. I saw an attendant and asked her. She pointed to them silently, looking me directly in the eyes. How did I miss them? What the hell is going on here? "Thanks," I said. Then she pointed at the coffee cream. Then the coffee. Then the orange juice, the eggs and the sausage. She pointed very slowly, deliberately. I didn't know it was possible to express pure condescension with just a finger. Did she think I snuck in? I thought of sawing off her finger with a plastic knife and tossing it in with the rest of the sausages.

Was she really as big a... no other word... bitch, as I thought? Couldn't be. I decided that she was a deaf mute. Then I saw her talking to another old lady.

And then I decided to download L7's "Shitlist" as soon as I got home. Perhaps the $100 a night Holiday Inn doesn't take to people who wear black knit caps. You won the first battle Mabel, but next time I'll be ready.

2.

Myspace Blog

February 11, 2007

AW, HUMANS FARTING

Or rather, FUN WITH ANAGRAMS.

Want to have some fun with anagrams? Go here: http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ Play around with the advanced editor or you could be looking through thousands.

Here are some for Ben Kreider:

KIN BREEDER

KEEN BIRDER

IRK BEE NERD

RED INK BEER

KINDER BEER

BRIER KNEED (hasn't that happened to us all?)

REEK BI NERD

BEE DRINKER

Here are some for Benjamin F. Kreider:

DINE MINE BARF JERK

KNIFE JAB REMINDER

JAB KINDER FIREMEN

JAB ME NERDIER FINK

JERKIER DAMNED FIB

DRAB FEMININE JERK

Here are some for Emma Leah Catherine Eck:

RECHECK ANAEMIA HELMET

HECKLE MANATEE CHIMERA

METAL CHEEK CHIME ARENA

CHEMICAL ETHANE REMAKE

HATCH ALIEN EMCEE MAKER

MAKE THE ANARCHIC MELEE

and my all-time fave:

RACE ME, MANLIKE CHEETAH

I can't stop. I have to tell you the very first one for Moe Gatto:

A GEM TOOT

and about 20 later...

MEGA TOOT

It's almost like it knows him.

God, I really can't stop. Do a search for "maurice gatto" with no words fewer than 5 letters and you'll find one entry-

EROTICA GAMUT

What a sick fuck! I'm bunkering in for a long night. None of you are safe.