Root Beer Barrel Mortality

I ran about four miles today. It really shakes off the cobwebs! There's something magic about it.

I used to run poorly, I'd run two miles like a race, trying to beat my previous record. The way to run is steady and long. It puts us in communion with our ancestors, and I'm not talking about our great-great-grandparents. It puts us in communion with our ancient ancestors who used to have to chase down game over long distances to survive. It's worth considering that our genes are basically unchanged for the last 80,000 years, and what was good for us back then is still good for us now.

After one hour of vigorous exercise size a day for a month, we need one to three hours less sleep, so it effectively takes no extra time. One hour of vigorous exercise adds two hours to our lives, so it actually gains us time. (Yes, I know, unless we get hit by a car while running.) Running, I really need to do more running. 

February 23, 2025

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I was in a minor moral conundrum tonight and asked myself, What Would Hitchens Say? Then I thought, the grave will supply plenty of time for silence, never be a spectator to unfairness, and seek debate for its own sake. I looked up the full quote:

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

February 23, 2021

Postscript- History doesn't record the conundrum, but I'm sure his words guided me.

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Here's a ridiculous tidbit. 

Back around Christmas I went to Lidl and a couple things rang up incorrectly. A few days later I went back, and a few more things rang up incorrectly. I emailed a complaint and they gave me a $10 courtesy coupon. 

I went back to use the coupon and a couple more things rang up incorrectly. Everything was always off in their favor. I complained again and they wrote a very apologetic email and gave me a $20 courtesy coupon. 

When I went to use that coupon, more things rang up incorrectly. I was getting really irritated! I had reached some threshold in their app where I was allowed to get a free chocolate bar, and since it was my birthday I could get a free Snickers. I would never just buy a Snickers at the checkout, but I figured I might as well get it. They ended up charging me half for each in a devious way that I won't bore you with. 

I complained again and told them I wasn't asking for anything but just that the whole thing was so ridiculous... it was always off a couple dollars in their favor, and that they shouldn't expect me to come back. They wrote a curt email and gave me a $3 courtesy coupon. 

Strange amount! How does it go from $10 to $20 to $3??? (I know somebody who found a black widow in their grapes at Giant about 25 or 30 years ago. Guess what Giant gave them. Correct, $60.) It's not like I expected a windfall, I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't a curt email and $3.

But now here's the thing, I got home from work today and there was a random cardboard box on my porch. Written on top in pen, they wished me a happy birthday and said they didn't want to lose me as a customer. It said it was from "Lidls." Weird, because the name of the store is Lidl. Do they refer to themselves as Lidls? Why is everything so odd? 

The cardboard box was heavy. Guess what was in it. 

Correct, hazelnut dark chocolate bars, the ones I always buy. Fifty of them! Such a ridiculous thing. I emailed them that it was unnecessary, and unexpected, and kind of funny, and very appreciated. So somehow now I don't even care that they keep ripping me off every time, evidently along with everybody in front of me in line and everybody behind me. 

I'm sure I'll still complain next time, but for tonight at least, I couldn't care less.

February 23, 2024

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It's true, there's a skeleton inside me. And that skeleton has arthritis.

February 23, 2021

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Do you notice that many people on the right don't even offer any evidence of their imagined widespread voter fraud? It's like they just feel it happened. So they can take their own advice on what to do with their feelings.

February 23, 2021

Brad- Hmm.....really? Let’s start with changing voter law outside the legislature......then we can go to the sheer lack of chain of custody of mail in ballots, followed by the Jimmy Carter study that opined that mail in voted were the worst possible way to run a legit election. Moving on to the multiple applications people received as well as the former residents of those addresses, all of which could have been filled out and received extra ballots. On to the people that gave sworn statements saying they went to cast their votes in person and were told they had already mailed in their votes, when they hadn’t. On to those Dominion machines, first, in 2019 the house democrats had claimed them unreliable and inaccurate, just as a preface. There have been several videos on youtube demonstrating their hack-ability and changing of votes. The very fact that they were online at all is a potential problem. Add in the massive ballot dumps in the wee hours, documented. Oh yeah and don’t forget about the video of the poll watchers being shooed out of the building and then boxes of ballots being pulled out from under a table, on security video. Oh yes, almost forgot, the thousands of ballots that had only Biden checked off and NO down-ballot voting/checking. So here are some of the reasons and really, with a complete actual audit, these can be proven or disproven, disprove them with the evidence and everyone should be satisfied.........but they won’t

Me- Yet the Supreme Court wouldn't even hear any cases, didn't even rule against them... wouldn't even hear them, because they are meritless, conjecture, attempts to move the goalposts after the election, etc. It might seem like liberals against conservatives, but don't ignore all top conservatives that are very convinced, and have refuted every one of the things you said.

Brad- Ben Kreider you can refute all you want with words, do the audits......not being heard doesn’t mean meritless.....it means they don’t wanna get involved, not being heard just means they won’t open the box and look at what’s in it......do the audit and shut everyone up......finite solution

Me- As I said before, it's impossible that you would be making the same argument if the situation was reversed... you would think Biden voters we're totally out of their minds pushing for audits after the overwhelming evidence that Trump won. If voter fraud happened, there's evidence, and if there's evidence, they might have won even 1 of 60 or 80 court cases or however many there were. The problem is that the imagined voter fraud crowd has moved the goalposts 20 times, and if the audits are done, and if they prove there was no fraud, then the audits were faulty... I can hear it now. And it will be on to something else, same as all the other times.

Brad- And in the end I would say, “fine, do the audit and shut them up”.........problem solved

Me- Then onto the aforementioned goalpost problem. "Did you know that one auditor texted an anti-Trump meme to his friend?" Audit ruined. I think you're missing the point that this audit would not possibly prove anything to the already convinced. There is no scenario that fits into their worldview that ends with, "well I guess Biden actually won."

I had a thousand engagements with a thousand Trump supporters, the vast majority of which would not admit that Biden had anything higher than a 0% chance to win. That still stands.

What do I know? I haven't investigated the evidence. I know that the courts see nothing there.

I know that prominent Republicans, as I've mentioned, would have every reason to see the evidence if it was there, and they see no evidence there. It would only be in their best interest to see the evidence. I think of Barr, think of McConnell. Those guys would be convinced by a nugget of a nugget of truth.

Postscript- And all that money given to Trump for election shenanigans, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and he didn't think audits were worth the money. 

Postscript to the postscript- They did do audits and found nothing. Can you believe it? It's almost like Trump... lost? 

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Huh, it turns out that Trump made $1.6 billion while president. Who would have thought, right? This proves that the big hoopla of giving away his $100,000 quarterly presidential salary all those times was effectively a miniscule advertising budget. Man, I made so many people mad by pointing out that if they have $10,000 in the bank and gave away $2, they were personally 2x more deserving of the headlines than some billionaire who gives away $100,000. Ah, nostalgia.

February 21, 2021

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George W. Bush nearly saved my life! 

I was driving with my kids today when a root barrel went right down my throat. I couldn't cough it out and was afraid I'd inhale it... my only option was to venture into the unknown and swallow it. Would it fit??? Best to try vs die. It fit but hurt going down. A minute later I started feeling faint and got all sweaty. I remembered that this was exactly what happened when George W. Bush choked on that pretzel. I was fighting it, but remembered he passed out... which is fine if you're watching a football game but not if you're driving! I pulled over and scribbled out a note for Gretel to give to someone in case I dropped over. After a couple minutes I felt better and drove home. 

Sidenote- I have some root barrels to give away if anybody wants them. You should probably know they are jagged, because I got a great deal on some seconds. 

Second sidenote- I was listening to a podcast at the time about our lack of appropriate nuclear protocol... reflecting on the end of life as we know it, not even realizing the danger lurking within an arm's reach.

Third sidenote- Five minutes after visiting the ancient Kreider burial ground, and I nearly joined them!

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This is supposedly where the first Kreider immigrant to America is buried- Hans Jacob Kreider (1673-1725). What was the world like then? He was escaping Civil War and religious persecution in Switzerland. Calculus was discovered during his life. Just missed the plague. George Washington wasn't even born when he died.

February 23, 2020

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I visited the grave of my great-great-grandmother today, who died when I was still four months away from being born. She was 18 when she had my great-grandma, who was 16 when she had my grandma, who was 19 when she had my mom, who was 21 when she had me. Jeesh.

(Loaded question- were my great-great-grandma and I alive at the same moment in time?)

February 23, 2019

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We rarely know what's good and what's bad. Mr. Rogers had every childhood ailment including scarlet fever, and then uses that as a catalyst to reach millions of children to improve their lives. The writer/director Samuel Fuller didn't speak for the first five years of his life, then exploded linguistically. Werner Herzog... I'll let him say it himself:

"One thing that my mother once told me was that I fell quite ill when I was five or six. We could not call an ambulance because even if we did manage to get hold of one, we were too deeply snowed in. So my mother wrapped me in blankets, tied me on a sled and pulled me all night into Aschau where I was admitted to hospital. She visited me eight days later, coming on foot through deep snow. I do not remember this, but she was so amazed that I was absolutely without complaint. Apparently I had pulled a single piece of thread from the blanket on the bed and for eight days had played with it. I was not bored: this thread was full of stories and fantasies for me."

Herzog is one of the greatest storytellers of the generation 

February 23, 2019

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Want to feel a little bit more hopeful about the modern world? Read Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now, a follow-up to one of my favorite books of all time, his Better Angels of Our Nature, which charted the continual decrease in violence since prehistoric times. Enlightenment Now reflects on all the progress we've made in in almost all areas (life, health, sustenance, inequality, peace, democracy, equal rights, knowledge, quality of life, happiness, etc) thanks to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. It challenges all of your notions with well documented detail, and if you know anything about Steven Pinker, CHARTS! It doesn't shy away from real challenges that we face, primarily environmental disaster and the possibility of nuclear war, but it does point out reasons to be hopeful regarding each. Neither does he shy away from the one big obstacle that currently stands in the way, you can probably guess. This is the longest book that I've read in years, and so worth it. I could have underlined every sentence of the last two pages. Borrow the book from your library and just read them if you like, it'll take two minutes and you can just rest assured that the rest of the book proves everything he says is true. Actually that wouldn't be very scientific of you, you better read the whole thing yourself, haha.

February 23, 2018

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Haha!

Question: Hamilton or West Side Story?

Pinker: I love them both, but West Side Story wins for Sondheim’s brilliant “Gee, Officer Krupke”, the best explanation of how nurture, not just nature, can lead to determinism.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/twenty-questions-steven-pinker/

February 23, 2018

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Nobody's better than Trump! Listen to Trump explain.

https://fb.watch/iT7_d4oCOy/?mibextid=NnVzG8

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Holy crap, I think I just solved the abortion debate with a nice compromise: abortions remain legal on earth BUT the culprit has to accept any punishment given by God. Can we all agree?

February 23, 2013

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On this day in 1455, the Gutenberg Bible became the first Western book printed with movable type.

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President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C. on this day in 1861, after an assassination plot was thwarted in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Émile Zola was imprisoned in France on this day in 1898,after writing J'Accuse…!, a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Easy to take out freedoms for granted.

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On this day in 1927, physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, describing his uncertainty principle for the first time.

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Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land on this day in 1941.

https://youtu.be/wxiMrvDbq3s

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Marines, including Pima Indian Ira Hayes, raised the flag on Iwo Jima on this day in 1945. Some Native Americans saw the fact that Ira's hand isn't quite touching the flag as a metaphor for their role in society- both in America, and yet not quite of America.

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The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began on this day in 1954, in Pittsburgh.

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On this day in 1974, just four days before I was born, the Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million more to release kidnap victim Patty Hearst.

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From Laura Palmer's Secret Diary, on this day in 1989- “Tonight is the night that I die. I know I have to because it's the only way to keep Bob away from me. The only way to tear him out from inside. I know he wants me. I can feel his fire. But if I die he can’t hurt me anymore”

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Samuel Pepys was born on this day in 1633. He is the author of The Diary of Samuel Pepys. I was at a bookstore today and I saw this book for a dollar, and I knew it was his birthday, and I considered buying it but didn't. Good thing too, because I just read through 50 quotes and each one was more boring than the last.

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W. E. B. Du Bois joined us on this day in 1868.

"The cause of war is the preparation if war."

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Ed "Too Tall" Jones joined us on this day in 1951. Do people actually call him "Too Tall?" Or do they call him "Ed "Too Tall" Jones?" 

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Kelly Macdonald from Trainspotting and No Country for Old Men joined us on this day in 1976. Trainspotting was released on this day in 1996, her 20th birthday.

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Aziz Ansari joined us on this day in 1983.

"I'm not making this up -- he goes 'Now if your neighbor marries a box turtle, that doesn't affect your everyday life. But that doesn't mean it's right.' I think it's pretty safe to assume that, at one point or another, Senator John Cornyn has thought about making love to a box turtle. I'm sorry, but that's not the first animal you jump to when you're writing that analogy."

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Anther notable birthday- Karl Jaspers (1883)

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John Keats left us on this day in 1821.

"Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever."

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Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanche, left us on this day in 1911.

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William Bonin was executed at San Quentin on this day in 1996. "The Freeway Killer," he tortured, raped, and killed at least 21 boys. He would often use their own t-shirts to strangle them. 

His last meal- two pepperoni and sausage pizzas, three servings of chocolate ice cream, and three six-packs of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

His last words- "That I feel the death penalty is not an answer to the problems at hand. That I feel it sends the wrong message to the youth of the country."

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Other notable deathdays- John Quincy Adams (1848), Carl Friedrich Gauss (1855)

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Mother Jones- It’s the Inequality, Stupid

Ahh charts, beautiful charts.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

February 23, 2011

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Huffington Post- Actor Jason Hervey Got 11 Stitches In A Bar Fight Thanks To His Role On 'The Wonder Years'

Well maybe that's something he should have considered before he so mean to Kevin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/jason-hervey-wonder-years-bar-fight_n_6738650.html

February 23, 2015

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The Hill- Poll: Majority finds Trump ’embarrassing’

Hahaha, 58% say they are embarrassed by Trump, but only 55% dissaprove of him. That means there's a very strange 3% who are embarrassed but don't disapprove. Sickos.

http://hill.cm/3jfU7yV

February 23, 2017

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The Atlantic- I Was a Muslim in Trump's White House

From the article:

The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security authority would “not be questioned.”

Placing U.S. national security in the hands of people who think America’s diversity is a “weakness” is dangerous.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/rumana-ahmed/517521/

February 23, 2017

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Einstein- "Force always attracts men of low morality."

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Sam Harris- The Riddle of the Gun

Somehow Sam's views on guns are simultaneously to the extreme left and extreme right. If you want to challenge your beliefs, whatever they are, take a listen. Gave me a lot to think about.

https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-riddle-of-the-gun-revisited/

February 23, 2018

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Vivian Maier

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Aristophenes- “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

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Chief Seattle- "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children."

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Jim Harrison- "I used to tell students…the difference between poetry and you is you look in the mirror and say, “I am getting old,” but Shakespeare looks in the mirror and says, “Devouring Time, blunt thou thy lion’s paws.”"

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Sherman Alexie- "Have you ever thanked your father and your mother for fucking you into existence?"

*Full excerpt below, it's a doozy

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Vonnegut- "History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again."

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H.L. Mencken- "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage."

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Galileo- "For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge."

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Unknown- "A priest asks the convicted murderer at the electric chair, “Do you have any last requests?” “Yes,” replies the murderer. “Can you please hold my hand?”"

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David Foster Wallace- "I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity."

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Schopenhauer- "Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure." 

You don't say. Thanks Sherlock.

Also Schopenhauer:

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment."

That's more like it.

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Palanhiuk-"Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart."

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Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman- "A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

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Kant- "Dare to think!"

Addendum:

Alexie writing about speaking to an audience of eight hundred, during a fund-raiser for salmon restoration:

    "Salmon," I said "are the most epic fuckers in the animal kingdom."

    The audience, crunchy-assed liberals one and all, laughed but not with the abandon I wanted to hear...

    "So, honestly," I said, unafraid of being even more inappropriate, "When we celebrate salmon, we are celebrating fucking. And I don't think we celebrate fucking enough. In fact, forget salmon for a minute. Let's talk about our mothers and father. I mean--have any of you ever thanked your parents for fucking and conceiving you? And I don't mean thank them all cute and poetic like, 'Oh, I light this ancestral fire in tribute to you for my human creation.' No I mean have you ever looked your mother and father in the eye and said, 'Thank you for fucking me into existence.'

    The audience laughed louder. I knew I'd won over a few more of them. But I wanted to win all of them. So I went stuntman.

    "In fact," I said as I pulled out my cell phone and held it close to the microphone. "My father is dead. But I'm going to call my mother right now."

 I heard gasps in the audience. Some woman shouted, “No!” The moment was hugely uncomfortable, very funny, and comedically dangerous. It was dangerous because I didn’t know if my mother was home to answer the phone.

  One ring.

  Please be home, Mom.

  Two rings.

  Please don’t be the machine.

  Three rings.

  What am I going to do if it’s the machine? If I leave a message, will it be funny?

  “Hello,” my mother answered.

  Thank God.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said. “I’m onstage in front of about eight hundred people in Bellingham, and we’re trying to save the salmon, and I just wanted to thank you for fucking Dad and conceiving me.”

  The audience laughed.

  My mother laughed.

  “So what do you think about that?” I asked her.

  She said, “I think you sound like you’re drunk. Have you been going to your AA meetings?”

  The audience laughed and laughed. I held the cell phone in the air as they laughed. That laughter was a celebration of my mother. She had won everybody in the room.