Better Angels, Worse Angels, Worse Demons, and Better Demons
Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director of El Topo and The Holy Mountain, turns 94 today, born in 1929. I donated some money for him to finish one of his recent films. He was crowdsourcing the funds. I never ended up even watching it! There's nothing the guy wouldn't do to finish a film on his own terms.
Vice- A Hundred Years Is Nothing: The VICE Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky
http://bit.ly/1BNXRdf
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Casey has a ridiculous story. He dreamed that he was in the Welsh Mountains and that there were hands of different races reaching up through the soil and they were asking him if he would give his life to help them. Their land was about to be destroyed.
In real life, he drove out to the Welsh mountains with Kevin Lehman and looked around. He actually found the exact tract of land that he had seen in his dream, although to his knowledge he had never seen it before, and there was logging equipment there!
He made a decision that he wanted to help but he could not give his life for it, since his primary commitment was to his family.
He dreamed again that the arms were reaching out of the ground, he let them know his decision, and the outstretched hands turned into fists and retracted into the ground, disappointed.
He had heard stories of the Minqua people who lived in the Welsh Mountains, apparently the descendants of escaped slaves and Native Americans, and figured the dream was about them.
He was later doing a sweat lodge on his land with Kevin and a Native American descendant from the Lakota tribe. The sweat lodge was totally dark, but at one point the Native American asked if they saw the native man who crept in. Casey and Kevin did not see him. The Native American said that the native was saying some word, "Min-kway", and asked if either of them knew what it meant.
Casey said, "Minqua?"
"Yeah."
Casey said, "Yeah, he's here for me."
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Do you know the difference between a dilapidated Greyhound depot and a lobster with breast implants? One is a crusty bus station and the other is a busty crustacean.
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I don't want to speak ill of the dead... so I wont. As they say, death is the great equalizer.
Did you ever notice that when people say they "don't want to speak ill of the dead," they are never talking about Hitler?
February 17, 2021
Jeff posted this link:
Rush Limbaugh Spent His Lifetime Speaking Ill of the Dead
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rush-limbaugh-spent-his-lifetime-speaking-ill-of-the-dead
Ben- Does this mean we should honor his memory by dishonored his memory through imitation?
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I do have to agree with Trump on this one- Saturday Night Live is indeed fake news. I don't know if that ever would have crossed my mind, glad he pointed it out.
There is no one more worthy of mockery than the person who demands to not be mocked.
February 17, 2019
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This gentleman is suffering from some afflictions.
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Assuming someone doesn't believe a 12-year old should be able to go down to the 7-11 and buy a handheld nuclear weapon for a dollar, they have some limits in mind concerning weaponry. And if not, don't let that guy have any weapons!
February 17, 2018
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If a voice in your head tells you that you're mentally ill if you listen to voices in your head, should you listen to that voice or not?
February 17, 2018
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Several times I heard the president congratulate himself for the RNC not getting hacked because he told Reince to make sure the cyber security is good. Yep, otherwise nobody would have thought of it. You know what he should do now, maybe tell Reince to run the country good.
February 17, 2017
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Question: "You said that the leaks are real, but the news is fake. I guess I don't understand. It seems that there's a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?"
Answer: "The reporting is fake. I'll tell you what else I see, I see tone. You know the word 'tone.' The tone is such hatred."
As an exercise in futility, one might watch the entire 77 minute press conference and compare the tone of the press vs. the tone of the guy who thinks the press is the enemy of America.
February 17, 2017
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Listening to Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker- 40 hours of audiobook! I'm thinking of buying the book an highlighting the whole thing.
February 17, 2015
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Some assholes turned my desk around!
February 17, 2015
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On this day in 1600, on his way to be burned at the stake for heresy, the philosopher Giordano Bruno had a wooden vise put on his tongue to prevent him continuing to speak. Well whatever the argument was, he won it.
"Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned."
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A tie in the Electoral College between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr on this day in 1801, was resolved when Jefferson was elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.
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The Arab Spring began on this day in 2011 when Libyan protests began against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. In Bahrain, security forces launched a deadly pre-dawn raid on protesters in Manama. The day is locally known as Bloody Thursday.
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Perhaps the greatest competitor of all time was born on this day in 1963, Michael Jordan.
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
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Hemingway- "Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
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Billie Joe Armstrong joined us on this day in 1972. I saw Green Day play at the height of their popularity. He was telling everybody to stop dancing but I wouldn't stop. There were thousands of people there and I was the only one dancing. He kept saying to stop, and I wouldn't. He quit playing, everybody was eager for him to continue, but he wasn't going to start again until I stopped dancing, and I wasn't going to. I don't know how many times he yelled at me to stop dancing but I didn't care. At some point I was mobbed by a bunch of jocks and the concert went on.
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Other notable birthdays- Gene Pitney (1941), Huey P. Newton (1942), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paris Hilton (1981)
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Molière left us on this day in 1673.
"Things are only worth what you think they are worth."
From my 12th grade Interpersonal Communications folder.
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Geronimo, the Apache tribal leader and Christian (???), left us on this day in 1909. When all the kids of America scream out your name to signify a sneaky attack, you must have done something right. Another of history's great competitors.
"During my many wars with the Mexicans I received eight wounds, as follows: shot in the right leg above the knee, and still carry the bullet; shot through the left forearm; wounded in the right leg below the knee with a saber; wounded on top of the head with the butt of a musket; shot just below the outer corner of the left eye; shot in left side; shot in the back. I have killed many Mexicans; I do not know how many, for frequently I did not count them. Some of them were not worth counting."
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Dennis Bagwell was executed on this day in 2005 for invading the Texas home of Ronald Boone and murdering his wife, daughter, and two granddaughters.
His last meal was steak, fried chicken, BBQ ribs, fries, onion rings, bacon, a dozen scrambled eggs with onions, fried taters with onions, sliced tomatoes, a salad with ranch dressing, two hamburgers with everything, peach pie, milk and coffee, and ice tea with real sugar.
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Rush Limbaugh died on this day in 2021. He made fun of the appearance of a teenage Chelsea Clinton, so Al Franken called him a big fat idiot. I don't see how that's not fair!
In case you are interested:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rush-limbaugh-chelsea-clinton/
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The Onion- Study Finds Jack Shit
http://onion.com/1AfD0Po
February 17, 2015
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New York Times- What a Failed Trump Administration Looks Like
I'm most interested in the criticism that comes from the right. I don't always agree with David Brooks but he's smart and I respect him, and I believe he has Republicans best interest in mind. From the article:
"I still have trouble seeing how the Trump administration survives a full term. Judging by his Thursday press conference, President Trump’s mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued."
And the end...
"The only saving thought is this: The human imagination is vast, but it is not nearly vast enough to encompass the infinitely multitudinous ways Donald Trump can find to get himself disgraced."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/what-a-failed-trump-administration-looks-like.html
February 17, 2017
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Hahaha, look at what doesn't cross Chris Wallace's threshold for "unhinged"!
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY": Well, look, there were some moments in there that made me uncomfortable, when Donald Trump said it would be good politics to blow that Russian spy ship out of the water. I am not sure that was a great moment for diplomacy. But no. He wasn't unhinged. I think that this was a determined effort by this president, who is by far the best spokesman in his administration, for his administration, to seize the narrative.
http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2017/02/17/analyzing-tone-trump-press-conference/
February 17, 2017
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Vivian Maier
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Moliere, again- "I assure you, an educated fool is more foolish than an uneducated one."
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Lao Tzu- "Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner."
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Baruch Spinoza- "The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak."
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John Muir- "I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news "
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Saul Bellow- "Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone."
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Galileo- "The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
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H.L. Memcken- "The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable."
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Kant- "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."
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Geronimo again- "I am not ashamed to be a Christian, and I am glad to know that the President of the United States is a Christian, for without the help of the Almighty I do not think he could rightly judge in ruling so many people. I have advised all of my people who are not Christians, to study that religion, because it seems to me the best religion in enabling one to live right."
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Giordano Bruno- "Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is not intelligible save to the like. Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all time, become Eternity; then you will understand God. Believe that nothing is impossible for you, think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every living being. Mount higher than the highest height; descend lower than the lowest depth. Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead, beyond death. If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God."
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Lincoln- "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
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