Dreaming About Knowing That What Is Happening Is Really Happening
Miyazaki-san
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I just told Emma that I was going to make a delicious Indian dinner. She said she hoped it wasn't the chicken and simmer sauce, because that's the one I like the least. "It is."
February 4, 2024
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Excellent sentiment from Bill Maher tonight as he was talking with an author of a book on our declining ability to focus: "People call it multitasking, they believe that they're doing three things at once, but they're really doing zero things at once because they're fucking them all up and not concentrating on anything."
I catch myself doing that all the time. It's helpful to hear someone say it out loud.
February 4, 2022
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Either my calculator is broken or I am older than Patrick Stewart was in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
February 4, 2022
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Emma got the kids some food coloring to play with in the snow and they had a good time making small patches of each color. When I went out this morning though I saw there was also streams of the yellow strewn at ridiculous angles all over the snow on the rock wall abutting our sidewalk. It looked like a pack of 80 great danes stopped by, or like we had a frat party last night, or that we were visited by a paintless Jackson Pollock. I asked Gretel why they did that. She said they didn't want anyone to take our snow. No worries about that anymore, problem solved.
February 4, 2021
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Chris Mathews on Hardball tonight:
"Tonight a man will stand in the well of the US House of Representatives and tell us our country has returned to greatness. He will cite numbers, numbers attached to dollar signs, and brag. What he will not cite is his own moral bankruptcy. But just as he can count the credits, we can count the deficits. In honesty, what price do we pay for a president whose word the world knows is worthless? Ask those who gave up their savings to attend something known As Trump University. In decency, what do we tell our children of a man who breaks every rule we try to teach them, who makes fun of people's appearances, who mocks the handicapped? In disloyalty, what does it cost this country to have a leader who abuses our allies, whose sidles up to the world's worst tyrants, who shows every sign of wanting to join them? Tonight the country enters the fourth quarter of the Trump reign. He will tell us why we should love him. He will promise us the world if we only bow down and worship him. If this sounds familiar, it's happened before. You might have read about it before, maybe in church. It's the classic deal with the Devil."
February 4, 2020
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Alright Iowa, you had a good run but from now on you have vote with the rest of us. Why did we ever take a totally atypical state and give them all the power to define the races anyway???
February 4, 2020
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Looks like Biden is not going to finish well in Iowa. I'm glad, there was no enthusiasm for him and I thought he would get close but lose.
But all that matters are the battleground states, and PERHAPS he had the best chance to win them.
I'm not going to dwell on this but it's possible that Biden would have won if not for the president's cheating, and we'll never know. All the more reason to win.
February 4, 2020
Postscript- I'm referring to Trump trying to discredit Biden with his Ukraine scandal that got him impeached. His intent was to damage Biden politically, and even if the Democrats but I didn't did nothing wrong, they still might not vote for him because Trump's accusation could hurt him in the general election. It's funny seeing that in retrospect I was exactly right, Biden was one that could beat Trump. I really wish we would know if any the others would have.
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Gretel and I visited some of our grandcestors tonight, and we found one of her 512 7th great-grandfathers, Peter Guth. I pointed out a guy digging a grave and she looked confused. She asked me why someone wanted to see their grandcestor. Hahaha, I had to explain that he was digging a new grave, not digging up an old one.
February 4, 2019
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This just in: the president sat through the national anthem stewing on how much he hates law enforcement, i.e. the FBI and DOJ.
February 4, 2018
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How do we know that what we think is happening is really happening? Sam Harris was discussing this on his last podcast. What we consider reality could just be a dream. Sam said that he once had a dream where he was in conversation with someone and explaining that he knew that what was happening was really happening, that he was certain it was not a dream. His interlocutor just smiled bemusedly. Then he woke up to discover it was a dream indeed. I've had the same exact experience!
February 4, 2018
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It's true that we don't know the results of the Mueller investigation. Maybe there was collusion, maybe not. Certainly seems like there's obstruction, but sure, I'll entertain the possibility that maybe I'm just nuts. Consider this though- the president has said "no collusion" hundreds of times and Politifact shows him lying 71% of the time. The odds are astronomic that he told the truth all those hundreds of times.
All right, I'm being facetious, but that argument might make more sense than the one I hear often- Mueller hasn't yet proven anything, therefore the president did nothing wrong. No, that means the jury is still out. It's "innocent before proven guilty", not "verdict is not yet in, therefore no wrongdoing."
To put this argument in perspective, ask if Ted Bundy had done anything wrong before the verdict came in. Even if a prosecutor hated him, was valid evidence still valid evidence? IF one piece of evidence was tainted, and could be thrown out, should have Bundy still been convicted, if the rest of the evidence was airtight?
But what if there was a conspiracy against Bundy??? Sure, maybe, but the OJ verdict would be the more apt analogy. "Institutions are out to get me," was his defense, the same as any criminal.
Find someone using that defense while trying to undermine law enforcement, under the guise of patriotism, and you have a scoundrel for all of time looking for his last refuge.
February 4, 2018
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It's no coincidence that the type of person who believes that Trump hates Mueller because of the technicalities of a FISA application is the same type that believes he fired Comey for the way he treated Clinton during the campaign.
February 4, 2018
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Robert Reich
Here’s how Trump turns lies into nearly acceptable truth.
Step 1: Trump lies.
Step 2: Experts contradict him, saying his claim is baseless and false. The media report that the claim is false.
Step 3: Trump blasts the experts and condemns the media for being “dishonest.”
Step 4: Trump repeats the lie in tweets and speeches. He asserts that "many people" say he's right.
Step 5: The mainstream media start to describe the lie as a “disputed fact."
Step 6: Trump repeats the lie in tweets, interviews, and speeches. His surrogates repeat it on Fox News and in the right-wing blogosphere.
Step 7: The mainstream media begin to describe Trump’s lie as a "controversy."
Step 8: Polls show a growing number of Americans (including most Republicans) believe Trump’s lie to be true.
Step 9: The media start describing Trump’s lie as "a claim that reflects a partisan divide in America,” and is “found to be true by many.”
Step 10: The public is confused and disoriented about what the facts are. Trump wins.
February 4, 2017
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Hanlon's Razor- never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
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Bill Maher- So Neil Gorsuch had a "Fascism Forever" club in High School? Conservative humor: I love that the premise is always "What if I said exactly what I meant?"
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Appendicitis! Operation in an hour, in hospital overnight. I'm sure Emma will tell you all the hilarious drug-induced things I said on my way in to surgery.
February 4, 2017
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Bees in Gretel's nose.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153500790413512&id=741063511&mibextid=NnVzG8
February 4, 2016
Postscript- Years wait are we figured out that she was probably saying "boogies."
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Pepper's showing off her birthday haircut...the best dog who ever dogged is 14. What is that in human years, you ask? Let's not do the math.
February 4, 2016
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Joseph Campbell- "And when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature; he has transcended his humanity, you know, and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, from which our mind removes us"
And there, in a nutshell, is the truth at the center of all fiction.
February 4, 2016
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Trumpertantrum': Trump Says Cruz Cheated In Iowa, Wants Results Overturned
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/03/465459903/trumpertantrum-trump-says-cruz-cheated-in-iowa-wants-results-overturned
"Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it," Trump wrote on Twitter, later calling Cruz "a total fraud." Cruz, for his part, called Trump's complaints sour grapes.
I'm with Cruz and Carson on this one!
February 4, 2016
Postscript- Huh, flat out losing and accusing the victor of fraud, somehow that seems eerily familiar but I can't quite place it. Fraud in a caucus, how is it even possible?
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First Gretel noticed a perfectly ordinary guy walking down the street, and then she pointed and laughed at him.
February 4, 2015
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Buddhist teaching calls for "joyful participation in the sorrows of the world." What do you think of that?
February 4, 2011
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On this day in 1703, in Tokyo, all but one of the forty-seven Ronin commited seppuku as recompense for avenging their master's death.
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On this day in 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
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The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California on this day in 1974, a couple weeks before I was born.
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On this day in 1992, a coup d'état was led by Hugo Chávez against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez. I wonder if Venezuelans were better or worse off afterward.
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Facebook's was born on this day in 2004!
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Nancy Pelosi tore Trump's State of the Union speech in half on this day in 2019. Wow! What a moment. Cathartic to have someone cut right through his noise, it happened so rarely.
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Nazi sympathizer, Charles Lindbergh, was born on this day in 1902, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and anti-Nazi dissident was born on this day in 1906.
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Rosa Parks joined us on this on this day in 1913.
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”
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Betty Friedan join us on this day in 1921, and left us on this day in 2006. Author of The Feminine Mystique, the intellectual backbone in the fight for women's equality.
"The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease."
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One of Seinfeld's comedy heroes, David Brenner, joined us on this day in 1936. What would modern humor be without David Brenner? Nobody knows.
"Dr. Ruth said if you want to be a better lover, what you should is when you get in bed with your woman, before you do anything else, you should recite an erotic poem to her. Now let me ask you something. Is there one man here who knows an erotic poem that doesn’t have the word “Nantucket” in it?"
"I was on the subway, sitting on a newspaper, and a guy comes over and ask, "Are you reading that?" I didn't know what to say. So I said, "Yes," stood up, turned the page, and sat down again."
"I don't like to watch golf on television because I can't stand people who whisper."
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Irish Comedian Dara Ó Briain was born on this day in 1972.
"Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."
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Other notable birthdays- Ida Lupino (1918), George A. Romero (1940), Dan Quayle (1947)
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Neal Cassady left us on this day in 1968 at the age of 41. He was famously the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in Ketouac's On the Road. He popped up in some Ginsburg poems as well. The cause of death, too obvious to be mentioned.
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Liberace left us one this day in 1987.
Jerry Seinfeld:
I saw this thing on Liberace on TV. Apparently, Liberace made his limo driver, who was also his lover, get all this plastic surgery so he would look like a young Liberace. And he was on the show and he looked just like a young liberace. I definitely see two potential problems here with this. First, creating a living, breathing, human blow up doll in your own likeness so you can sodomize yourself as a young man. That's number one. Number two, getting involved with someone you work with. That can get awkward too. They must have had some weird fights. "Listen, buddy. You being the new Me may be new to you, but it's getting pretty old to me. And don't look at me like me when I'm talking to you."
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Patricia Highsmith left us on this day in 1995. She wrote one of the best screenplays in cinema history- Strangers on a Train.
BRUNO
Okay, Guy. Want me to tell you one
of my ideas for murdering my father?
GUY
(indicating the
detective novels)
You've been reading too many of these.
BRUNO
(going right on)
You want to hear about the busted
light socket in the bathroom, or the
carbon monoxide in the garage?
GUY
No. I may be old fashioned, but I
thought murder was against the law.
BRUNO
But not against the law of nature.
My theory is that everybody is a
potential murderer. Didn't you ever
want to kill somebody? Say one of
those useless fellows Miriam was
running around with?
GUY
You can't go around killing people
just because you think they're
useless.
BRUNO
Oh, what's a life or two? Some people
are bitter off dead, Guy. Take your --
wife and my father, for instance.
It reminds me of a wonderful idea
had once. I used to put myself to
sleep at night -- figuring it out.
Now, let's say you want to get rid
of your wife.
GUY
Why?
BRUNO
Let's say she refuses to give you a
divorce --
(raises a finger and
stops Guy's protest)
Let's say. You'd be afraid to kill
her because you'd get caught. And
what would trip you up? Motive.
Now here's the plan...
GUY
I'm afraid I haven't time to listen.
BRUNO
(ignoring the remark)
It's so simple, too. A couple of
fellows meet accidentally, like you
and me. No connection between them
at all. Never saw each other before.
Each of them has somebody he'd like
to get rid of, but he can't murder
the person he wants to get rid of.
He'll get caught. So they swap
murders.
GUY
Swap murders?
BRUNO
Each fellow does the other fellow's
murder. Then there is nothing to
connect them. The one who had the
motive isn't there. Each fellow
murders a total stranger. Like you
do my murder and I do yours.
GUY
(with relief)
We're coming into my station.
BRUNO
For example, your wife, my father.
Criss-cross.
GUY
(sharply)
What?
BRUNO
(with a smile)
We do talk the same language -- don't
we, Guy?
GUY
(preparing to leave)
Sure, we talk the same language.
Thanks for the lunch.
BRUNO
(beaming)
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I thought
the lamb chops were a little overdone
myself.
He holds out his hand. Guy is in a hurry but he shakes hands.
GUY
Nice meeting you, Bruno.
BRUNO
(detaining him at the door)
You think my theory is okay, Guy?
You like it?
GUY
Sure, sure, Bruno. They're all okay.
(he salutes a quick
goodbye and hurries away)
Left alone, Bruno picks up Guy's lighter from the table, starts to call Guy back to hand it to him. Then he looks closer at the insignia of crossed tennis rackets.
BRUNO
(smiling)
Criss-cross.
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Other notable deathdays- Ossie Davis (2005), Lux Interior (2009), Edgar Mitchell (2016)
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NPR- Vermont Inmates Hide Image Of Pig On Police Decals
Imagine how satisfied they were!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/03/146358114/vermont-inmates-hide-image-of-pig-on-police-decals
February 4, 2012
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Flavorwire- Movies abandoned foreign countries for weird reasons
Haha, the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business was banned in Ireland because they thought it would promote anarchic tendencies. I'd say!
http://flavorwire.com/254645/movies-banned-in-foreign-countries-for-weird-reasons
February 4, 2012
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Huffington Post- This Republican Senator Is Fighting For Your Freedom Not To Wash Your Hands In The Bathroom
On the positive side, he believes that the government that governs the least, governs the best, so he's putting his money where his mouth is. On the negative side, if victorious, he'll also be putting the germs of other people's private parts where his mouth is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/thom-tillis-handwashing_n_6606802.html
February 4, 2015
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The Week- Jimmy Kimmel has 'Jesus' read actual quotes from presidential candidates, and it's sacrilegious
http://theweek.com/speedreads/603252/jimmy-kimmel-jesus-read-actual-quotes-from-presidential-candidates-sacrilegious
February 4, 2016
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Penguin Chimpanzee Joke
https://youtu.be/PVZieID1pwk
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New York Times- Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Said to Have Helped Thwart L.G.B.T. Rights Rollback
Thank you! Now on to the financial, environmental, and other social rollbacks I assume. And the authoritarian roll-front.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/lgbt-rights-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner.html
February 4, 2017
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From Errol Morris's abandoned Donald Trump project.
https://youtu.be/aeQOJZ-QzBk
My favorite Trump quote, seriously.
"I think you learn in Kane that maybe wealth isn’t everything. In real life I believe that wealth does indeed isolate you from other people. It's a protective mechanism. You have your guard up. Much more so than if you didn't have wealth."
You know what Kane says in the film? "You know… if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man."
Eager for Errol Morris to perhaps finish this one day.
February 4, 2017
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CNN- Trump defends Putin: ‘You think our country’s so innocent?’
Trump is right- our country is not so innocent. But the implication (since the initial statement was tied to praise for Putin) is that it's ok to not be innocent, ok to kill for the state in nefarious ways.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/
February 4, 2017
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Washington Post- An Equal-Opportunity Curmudgeon
Haha! I don't think Fran has changed much in 40+ years. This is from a 1981 article.
Those unfamiliar with Lebowitz might think her a moralist, an elitist, a snob. She is all those. But she is an equal-opportunity snob, venting her disdain regardless of one's race, disability, sexual persuasion, or for that matter, species.
When told, for example, that her wish to bar all dogs from New York would deprive "the blind and pathologically lonely," she suggests that "the lonely lead the blind." This would provide "companionship to one and a sense of direction to the other, without inflicting on the rest of the population the all-too-common spectacle of grown men addressing German shepherds in the respectful tones best reserved for elderly clergymen and Internal Revenue agents."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1981/08/30/an-equal-opportunity-curmudgeon/60068cd9-df7d-4190-bca1-c5b3054bf10c/
February 4, 2021
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Vivian Maier
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Mahatma Gandhi- "Speak only if it improves upon the silence."
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James Jones, The Thin Red Line:
If I never meet you
In this life
Let me feel the lack
A glance from your eyes
Then my life
Will be yours
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Yoda- "Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is."
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Kurt Vonnegut- "Did you know that if you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing will happen? But if you shake the jar hard, the ants start killing each other. The red ants consider the black ants their enemies, and the black ants consider the red ants their enemies. The true enemy is the one shaking the jar. The same thing happens in human society. So, before we attack each other, we should think about who is shaking the jar!"
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Euripides- "A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel- "To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great."
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Thomas Paine, 1797- "Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."
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Soren Kierkegaard- "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself."
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Victor Hugo- "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."
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Elon Musk, genius- "I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don't like anything that creates a sort of lord and peasants type of thing."
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Ed O'Neill's Steve Martin story.
https://youtu.be/X2TgAzDuj8U
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H.G. Wells- "Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening at once."
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William James- "The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."
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Sacks- "We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought."
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H.L. Mencken- "Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race."
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Edward Abbey- "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
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David Brenner- "I was on the subway, sitting on a newspaper, and a guy comes over and ask, "Are you reading that?" I didn't know what to say. So I said, "Yes," stood up, turned the page, and sat down again."
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Philomena Cunk, from Cunk on Earth
"Writing changed the world. Suddenly ideas didn't have to disappear just because the person whose head they were trapped in had died. Instead, you could convert your ideas into writing, and then anyone else could come along and upload those ideas into their own brain by wirelessly importing them through their eyes."
Addendum
February 4, 2007
This is not my last blog
Oh God!
I just burned 250 calories on my exercise bike. After burning 10 per minute for 3 minutes I thought "This is kind of nice, I'll do this for 25 minutes and have a nice workout." At 6 minutes I wondered if I could burn half of the calories in 10 minutes. At 8 minutes I warned myself to take it easy- reminding myself that I always get too eager and end up getting hurt. At 10 minutes I was disappointed for missing my new goal. At 14 I decided I could redeem myself by burning all 250 in 20 minutes, eclipsing my old record. At 17 I still need to burn 60. I decided it couldn't be done.
Earlier in the day, I finished watching Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story. I was blown away. What a life story that guy has! And for my money, he has the quote of the 20th century. I can't write it. It's kind of like, "No Iraqi ever called me a cracker," except replace "Iraqi" with "Viet Cong" and "cracker" with an offensive word for black people. The guy fought nearly an entire bout with a broken jaw, reclaimed the heavyweight title twice, befriended the entire continent of Africa, became a pawn (cough cough), I mean disciple, of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and (somehow) became a worldwide symbol of peace and brotherhood. A boxer! (Or a "pugilist" for my highbrow friends.) And all because some cracker stole his bike.
17 minutes into my workout I remembered Muhammad Ali- the courage, the perseverance, the resolve. Realizing that my thoughts sounded a lot like a speech of the current president, I really kicked it into high gear (metaphorically and literally.) I burned 16 in the 18th minute and 15 in the 19th minute leaving 29 for the 20th minute. Could it be done? I didn't think so.
I thought again of Muhammad Ali- testifying to a state congress and answering yes when asked if he thought refusing to go to Vietnam made him a good role model. He lost his title and wasn't allowed to fight for years because of his refusal. I thought of him getting mad and cutting in half his predictions of the round he'd deliver his knockout. I thought about his determination and rigorous training. Again and again he returned to top form, even when he was close to 40. I thought about that cracker stealing his bike, and I focused on my bike.
I pumped my legs in a tremendous fury. The sweat was flying off me like it flew off George Foreman at the Rumble in the Jungle (for the uninitiated- http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0701/gallery.box.ali.favorites/content.6.html) Ten seconds left and I needed to burn 7 more. I went ape-shit berzerk. 8 seconds, 6 more- 6 seconds, 5 more- 4 seconds, 3 more- 2 seconds, 2 more- 1 second, 1 more...
At exactly on 20 minutes I did it! I did it! I'm the greatest! I'm the greatest! I'm... in serious danger of dying. Wait, this is no joke. 40 year-olds die all of the time from shovelling too much snow. A 32 year-old could certainly die from 19 strenuous minutes of bike-riding, followed by a maniacal minute. I wondered whether I should scrawl my last words on the blackboard next to the bike. No chalk. Rats! I could write them in sweat and hope someone thinks to look closely. No, that's stupid. If I can stumble into the computer room I can tell my friends that this might be it, and offer them some last advice. It was decided. So Dear Reader, this might be it. Have faith in humanity, and death.
Wait. I'm not going to die. (And apparently I haven't ruined the keyboard by flooding it with sweat.) I'm stronger. I feel great. I will get myself in even better shape. There will be another comeback! I will live to beat that bike again!
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