Thousands of Memories and Even More Non-Memories
A mesmerizing picture of the farmland before Garden Spot was built. You can see the radio tower to the right. So many of my memories were yet to be made there, thousands? Today, thousands of other events that took place there are no longer memories, but are still somehow a part of me. I often think about how the land was used before us. It's rare that we get to actually see it. I guess the real question is what will come after us.
Gaston Bachelard, Fragments of a Poetics of Fire- "One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it."
I have a fortune from a fortune cookie- "Yesterday is always with us, yet yesterday is always gone."
February 22, 2021
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Before school, I just heard Emma upstairs tell Zuzu- "That's high quality weirdness."
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Today reminds me of a Mitch Hedberg joke.
"I hope the next time I move I get a real easy phone number, something that's real easy to remember. Something like 222-2222. I would say, "Sweet." And then people would say, "Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?" I'd say, "Just press 2 for a while. And when I answer, you will know you have pressed 2 enough."
February 22, 2022
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Sometimes I get the feeling a majority would vote for Bernie, but a minority of that majority who would, actually won't, soley because they don't believe a majority would vote him. Get it?
February 22, 2020
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Donald Trump Jr. is getting a bunch of flak for referring to "loser teachers" at a campaign rally... but to be fair, his father taught him everything he knows.
February 22, 2019
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There are like 10-20% of us who are gun nuts who believe 18-year-olds should be able to buy automatic weapons (your gun rights shall not be infringed upon!) and also believe there should be no gun-free zones. If these people are to be believed, good high school seniors should come to school armed to the gills ready to engage in combat with the bad guy who came to school with a gun. In all the shooting would anybody even know who the bad guy is? This is their best of all possible worlds.
February 22, 2018
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Did you hear that the president supports a ban on bump stocks, favors raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21, and supports universal background checks? Great! It just goes to show you that there's nothing we can't do under the wise leadership of a bunch of teenage kids.
February 22, 2018
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I have a theory... those who are compelled to legislate against transgender bathroom rights are the ones who feel a compulsion to peep on their toilet neighbor. I might be wrong, I probably am... but that thought wouldn't cross my mind. So maybe I'm right. Kick it around a while.
February 22, 2017
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Some kids are afraid of monsters, but monsters are afraid of Gretel.
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Cory Booker pointed out that the Constitutional Originalist Scalia would agree that, as Article 2 states, "the president shall nominate a Supreme Court justice." But what does the Constitution say about stonewalling?
February 22, 2016
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My baby just stuck her finger so far up my nose that she touched the part of my brain that was shocked by how far her finger went up my nose.
February 22, 2016
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Tomorrow would have been Mitch Hedberg's 48th birthday. I plan to start it the way I start every day- by thinking of this joke when I buckle my belt:
"My belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. What's really going on down there? Who is the real hero?"
February 22, 2016
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I just threw a bag of cat litter from my front door right into our curbside trashcan, about 40 feet away. I'd like one of you to see that this gets mentioned in my obituary.
February 22, 2016
Rick- It didn't knock over the can? That's hall of fame worthy. Did you calculate the trajectory and how it would need to land in the can to accomplish that or is this just natural skill?
Abby- I just keep imagining you missing or it hitting the can and exploding. Cat shit and litter everywhere!!
Ben- Honestly, once in a while I have an overwhelming feeling that I couldn't possibly miss. When I get that feeling I take the shot. It's as if missing would have torn the space-time continuum, and then I would have had a worse problem than picking cat turds up off the street.
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2015 Oscar Notes
If they don't cut out the In Memoriam segment next year due to time constraints, my million dollar idea is this- play an actual clip from one of the dead person's movies.
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I know Jared Leto won an Oscar last year for Dallas Buyers Club but I preferred him in his iconic role of Neil on the Young Ones.
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Birdman's one long unbroken trick shot is a meaningless gimmick in a boring movie. Boyhood's non-gimmick of filming a few days every year over a decade plus completely suspended my disbelief.
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You know, I think I only watch the Oscars for the montages.
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Friends, we have won as many best director Oscars as Kubrick, Hitchcock, Welles, Griffith, Hawks, Kurosawa and Lubitsch combined. We're in good company!
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Trying to squeeze in more nominated films before the Oscars next weekend. I loved every second of Nebraska (especially those horrible, horrible brothers)... but The Act of Killing, oh boy, there's a movie that could change the world. I can't believe it exists. It's a documentary made up of recent interviews with the perpetrators of the Indonesian Genocide of the mid-60's... it goes places you can't imagine. It's on Netflix streaming.
February 22, 2014
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Jason Tabor- "Somebody needs to find the guy who invented pretzel rods and straighten HIM out!"
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You know you're really hungry when you open a can of cat food and your mouth starts watering.
February 22, 2012
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On this day in 1943, members of the White Rose resistance, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst are executed in Nazi Germany.
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On this day in 1974, 5 days before I was born, Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate Richard Nixon. He was killed by police.
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At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery on this day in 2006, stealing the equivalent of about $92.5 million, from a Securitas depot.
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George Washington joined us on this day in 1732.
"In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy."
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Arthur Schopenhauer join us on this day in 1788.
"Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things."
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Edward Gorey joined us on this day in 1925.
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"Vegetable rights and peace," Nigel Planer, was born on this day in 1952.
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Rachel Dratch was born on this day in 1966. When she was 16, watching Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live, I bet she couldn't have conceived of the fact that she would be responsible for one of the all-time best skits.
https://youtu.be/TfE93xON8jk
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Drew Barrymore was born on this day in 1975. Every once in awhile I'll reflect on the fact that we are lucky to have her here with us.
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Other notable birthdays - Luis Bunuel (1900), Robert Wadlow (1918), Ted Kennedy (1932), Julius Erving (1950), Kyle McLauchlan (1959), Steve Irwin (1962)
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We lost Andy Warhol on this day in 1987 after he went in for a regular operation.
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Sonny James left us on this day in 2016, singer of perhaps the best Native American teen tragedy song in history.
https://youtu.be/XchEfbZ8Rps
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti left us on this day in 2021.
“Don't slip on the banana peel
of nihilism, even while listening
to the roar of Nothingness."
Considered himself the last of the bohemians, not the first of the beats. Quite a life. Imagine that a mere 60 or 70 years ago in this country you could end up in court defending your right to publish poems.
"The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/obituaries/lawrence-ferlinghetti-dead.html
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Other notable deathdays-
Amerigo Vespucci (1512), Brody Stevens (2019)
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The Benjamin Franklin Effect- If you want an enemy to like you... ask them to do you a favor??? These brains of ours, they're weird.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/20/the-benjamin-franklin-effect-mcraney/
February 22, 2014
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Lungfish- Computer
"Pledge allegiance to outer space..."
https://youtu.be/q7-MAy2yyKY
February 22, 2014
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If only every Oscar speech was as good as Hitchcock's- "Thank you."
As an afterthought, he's to back to the microphone for a second and says, "very much indeed."
https://youtu.be/DitE_e3VDMk
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A great montage is better than a good film. The Graduate is the cinematic highpoint of montages.
https://youtu.be/5wxCYFPDsOs
February 22, 2015
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Al Jazeera- Muslims raise $55,000 to fix vandalised Jewish cemetery
Well someone has to spread a message of unity. Thanks to these people.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/muslims-raise-55000-fix-vandalised-jewish-cemetery-170222060559511.html
February 22, 2017
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Interview with one of my favorite authors:
Question- There was a video that was going around a little while ago, a speech by Grover Norquist, in which he said that all conservatives need in a president is “enough working digits to handle a pen.” So they get Trump, and he represents that notion beautifully — a made-for-camera, sleight-of-hand guy, ape-like but able to work a pen. But now he’s in the White House and there’s no way to control him. It’s a madhouse. He’s just a guy who likes to push buttons and he doesn’t care which button it is.
Shields- That’s the trillion-dollar question, ain’t it? Is he a useful idiot? Is he in control of this entire narrative? Is he wildly self-destructive? Is he giddy that he’s going to finally feel something in his anhedonic life — his own demise? Or is he going to launch the nuclear codes? The answer is: Tune in.
https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/weaponized-fascination-interview-david-shields/
February 22, 2019
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Vivian Maier
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Elvis- “It’s all a big hoax, honey. I never wrote a song in my life. I get one-third of the credit for recording it. It makes me look smarter than I am. I’ve never even had an idea for a song. Just once, maybe.”
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Hitler- "The swine who stole my dog doesn't realize what he did to me."
This happened just after WWI, and he still shook with rage decades later when remembering it.
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Bob Dylan quoted Tom Waits- "There ain't no devil, just God when he's drunk."
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Fernando Pessoa- "We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love."
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Leibniz- "He who hasn't tasted bitter things, hasn't earned sweet things."
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H.L. Mencken-"Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
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Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman- "We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."
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Lincoln- "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
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Kant- "One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him."
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Galileo- "Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth."
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Jim Jefferies- "I've actually phased out the misogynistic jokes because I used to think that everyone knew that I was joking."
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Unknown- "You’re not completely useless. You can always be used as a bad example."
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Andy Bernard, The Office- “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”
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David Foster Wallace- "Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
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Palanhiuk- "This is your life and its ending one moment at a time."
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