Apotheosis of All That Is Wrong With Us

The Castle Bravo test took place on this day in 1954. A 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

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I'm going to play a State of the Union drinking game. For every clap, I'm going to drink one molecule of wine. By my calculations, eight quadrillion claps will equal about one glass.

March 1, 2022

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I really like Pete... rightly or wrongly, I saw him as a Bernie/Warren politician who put electability over pronounced ideology. It's like this, Obama can't RUN on gay marriage in 2008 but come on, he supports it. I liked his pragmatism, and his takes on things often felt new and refreshing. I did not like his straw man attacks on Bernie at the last debate, but who am I to speak ill of the dead? And can say I was totally gay for his ability to boil down complex ideas into a perfect paragraph? I think he'll be president one day... 10 more election cycles until his late 70's.

March 1, 2020

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I never understand why people scoff at preparedness... as if we should wait until it's a full-blown pandemic and then start getting ready. If we prepare 99 times necessarily and it becomes necessary once, that's a net positive. 

Rather- "At this point the number of infections in the United States is low, and we have to hope it stays that way, while at the same time preparing for the worst."

March 1, 2020

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There was a lost story yesterday, overshadowed by the president blaming the military for a death on a mission that he ordered, and the fact that he held composure for an hour while he read. Pressed again on anti-semitism, he needed to remind us that "sometimes it happens in reverse." My god!

A book could be written on the overshadowed stories every single day, each of which would have lead to Obama's impeachment, maybe even Bush's, probably Clinton's, actually every president's.

March 1, 2017

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The stock market is surging thanks to the guy who wants to get rid of the Dodd-Frank protections put in place the last time the bubble burst. I'm making financial decisions under the assumption there's an impending collapse.

March 1, 2017

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Wow, that speech last night, he read it so perfectly- so presidential! Am I right? And that comment yesterday morning, evading blame for a military death for a mission he ordered, and maybe slept through... now what's the word for that? It's not evil... the New York Times would be evil for reporting on it though. It's not subhuman, we're all human, mistakes and all. I know- it's spineless!

March 1, 2017

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Not My Fault

Emma's mom and I always argue about the value of the Lancaster Library's inter-library loan program. I think it is indispensable, she thinks it should be done away with. We go around and around. 

(In case you don't know, anybody with a library card in Lancaster County can request any book or movie from any other library in the county and have it sent to the library of their choice. I use it constantly... and so should you.) 

I just found out today that the library is looking for a new company to do it for the them. For some reason they were no longer happy with the other company doing it. Exciting! I just happen to manage a trucking company. I would love to be in charge of such a great service. 

So Emma's mom called me tonight and I told her about it. Yeah, I was trying to push her buttons. I love arguing when I'm 100% right! She became kind of frantic when I told her... 

Her- "But Ben, what about the man who is already doing it?" 

Me- "That guy will be out of a job." 

Her- "Ben! You would just take a man's job from him?!" 

Me- "No, the library would. I'd have someone who works for us do it." 

Her- "Well I think that's a rotten thing to do." She's never happier than when she finds a perceived fault... makes her feel better about her own faults. 

She went on to say she saw an article in the paper last week asking for suggestions on how to cut library costs. It turns out she told them they should cut out the inter-library loan program since it was unnecessary. The lady she talked to made all of the points I make- every library in essence multiplies their stock by ten, everybody saves traveling, it makes people are more apt to read. The reasons go on and on, I won't bore you. 

She said, "Well I still think it's too expensive. If people want something they should just go and get it." 

Me- "How many people are in Lancaster County? 

Her- "500,000." 

Me- "Pretend the program costs $100,000 for the year..." 

Her- "How much does it cost?" 

Me- "...I'm not telling." 

Don't ever tell Emma's mom how much something costs! 

Me- "So rather than everyone in the county paying twenty cents a year for this service you think they should all run all over the whole county looking for the items they want???" 

Her- "But..." 

Me- "It would save tons of money and time." 

Her- "How would it save time?" 

Me- "They wouldn't have to drive around!" 

Her- "I see what you mean." It takes a long time, but once in a great while you can get an idea to make sense to her. I told her I had to finish dinner and we hung up. I took my naan out of the oven and something dawned on me. I called her back. 

Her- "Hello." 

Me- "You called the library trying to get them to take that guy's job away from him." 

She giggled.

March 1, 2010

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On this day in 1692 the beginning what would become known as the Salem Witch Trials when Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba were brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts.

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Yellowstone National Park's birthday, established on this day in 1872, the world's first national park. 

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Nikola Tesla gave the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri on this day in 1893.

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Tragedy on this day in 1932- the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped, and would be found dead several months later.

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Johnny Cash and June Carter wed on this day in 1968. Was it the greatest love story of the twentieth century? The great Sarah Vowell:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/247/what-is-this-thing

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Ralph Ellison joined us on this day in 1914. From The Invisible Man

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

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Harry Belafonte join us on this day in 1927. One of my very favorite songs:

JAMAICA FAREWELL

Down the way, where the nights are gay,

and the sun shines daily on the mountain top,

I took a trip on a sailing ship,

and when I reach Jamaica I made a stop.

But I'm sad to say,

I'm on my way,

won't be back for many a day.

My heart is down,

my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Down at the market you can hear,

ladies cry out while on their heads they bear,

acky rice, salt, fish are nice

and the rum is fine any time a year.

But I'm sad to say,

I'm on my way,

won't be back for many a day.

My heart is down,

my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Sounds of laughter everywhere,

and the dancing girls swing to and through.

I must declare my heart is there,

thou I've been from Maine to Mexico.

But I'm sad to say,

I'm on my way,

won't be back for many a day.

My heart is down,

my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Down the way, where the nights are gay,

and the sun shines daily on the mountain top,

I took a trip on a sailing ship,

and when I reach Jamaica I made a stop.

But I'm sad to say,

I'm on my way,

won't be back for many a day.

My heart is down,

my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Sad to say,

I'm on my way,

won't be back for many a day.

My heart is down,

my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

https://youtu.be/Zh1ow6zKapQ

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Kesha join us on this day in 1987. How could this be good??? Doesn't matter. A cover of Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's All right

https://youtu.be/mNCEV7ZSNFo

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Other notable birthdays: Harry Carey (1914), Robert Lowell (1917), Robert Bork (1927), Dirk Benedict (1945), Allen Thicke (1947), Ron Howard (1954), Javier Bardem (1969)

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Arthur Koestler left us on this day in 1983. From Darkness at Noon:

"Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love."

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Iris Apfel left us today at 102. I'm sure she picked this picture for her to be remembered by. The New York Times called her an "eye-catcher with a kaleidoscopic wardrobe."

The fashion designer Duro Olowu said, of the universal quality of her work- “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everybody.”

Iris- “When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else."

March 1, 2024

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Another notable deathday- Jackie Coogan (1984)

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Is The Act of Killing the best documentary in a decade? When you get Errol Morris and Werner Herzog to produce your movie, you've done something right. Here they are talking about it.

https://youtu.be/LLQxVy7R9qo

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The Marginalian- Why Cloudy Days Help Us Think More Clearly

"The study was essentially an ambush memory test administered to a sample of shoppers exiting a small store: The scientists had placed ten trinkets on the store counter — various plastic toys, Matchbox cars, a piggy bank — and asked the shoppers to recall as many as possible upon leaving the store, as well as to identify the ten items among a list of twenty. The experiment was replicated on multiple days, at various times of day, over the course of two months. The researchers found that shoppers were able to recall three times as many items on cloudy days than on sunny ones."

I have always preferred cloudy days!

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/11/weather-creativity/

March 1, 2015

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There is still magic in the world. The greatest ping pong shot ever since the world began.

https://youtu.be/IumELWqOScA

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God damn I love sneaky pick-off moves! Just phenomenal!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fanbuzz.com/college-sports/college-baseball/blake-fox-rice-pickoff-move/amp/

March 1, 2016

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The Onion- Ben Carson’s Message Undercut By Eyes Drifting In Different Directions

http://onion.com/1Qqu42Y

March 1, 2016

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https://samharris.org/podcasts/188-february-28-2020/

These weekly podcasts with Sam Harris and Paul Bloom are the best. They are wide-ranging, from psychology to current events to philosophical thought experiments. They disagree at times but exactly how people should disagree- nicely, and in a way that fosters additional thought. And they have the best Trump commentary.

Sam Harris- "I don't see 'lock her up' as a brilliant political move. I don't even see it as a move. It's more of him just showing up as a sort of super-stimulus to 40% of America. There's something so cartoonish about him. He has the power of a cartoon. Well you got me on another anti-Trump rant. I once said that he was like a Golem that was conjured by every bad thing that had ever been said about America, the physical manifestation of everyone's external judgements on what the Ugly American is like. If you took professional wrestling, and McDonalds french fries, and the NRA, and infomercials about bogus products that don't work, and you mix them all together, and stick them in the back of a tacky white limousine, and you drive it around Central Park 500 times and you open the door, out would step Donald Trump. He's the confection of all that American crap. For some reason that apotheosis of all that is wrong with us, all that is just self-regarding and obtuse, and that works for 40% of America at this moment in history. He's got this perverse power. It's like he's got that glove from the Avengers movie. He's got the stones for hypocrisy and narcissism and he's working on the ones for the banality of evil and eventually he'll have all the power in the universe when everything goes wrong."

Paul Bloom- "So I've really failed in my quest to get you to say something nice about him."

March 1, 2020

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What if we dropped every nuclear bomb on Earth at once?

https://youtu.be/JyECrGp-Sw8

Spoiler alert- we could drop 3 on every city on earth, wipe out half the world's population, and still have 1500 left over.

March 1, 2022

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Charles Dickens- “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

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Jack Kerouac- "... there is nothing more haunting than a house at night when the family is asleep, something strangely tragic, something beautiful forever."

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Oscar Wilde:

"Behind every exquisite thing 

that existed, there was 

something tragic."

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Seneca- "Misfortune tests brave men."

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Errol Morris, on searching for truth- "Ambiguity is frightening. It means that our grip on the world is uncertain and incomplete. And yet I love it."

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Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters- "The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."

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David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments- "I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard."

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Arthur Schopenhauer- "How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do."

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Mitch Hedberg- "I can't floss my teeth, man. I can't get into the flossing thing. People who smoke cigarettes, they say "Man, you don't know how hard it is to quit smoking." Yes I do. It's as hard as it is to START flossing."

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Hunter S. Thompson

Song of the Sausage Creature

Cycle World; March, 1995

I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid.

I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler, and my infamous old friend Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.

Some people will tell you that slow is good-and it may be, on some days-but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble its caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba.

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Not sure I agree! He's Andre, I'm Wally.

Addendum

Taste of Cinema- 15 Best Absurdist Movies You Shouldn’t Miss

Great list, I've seen most. Here's the best succinct synopsis of Synecdoche, NY I've read:

"While Charlie Kaufman gained notoriety and praise thanks to “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Synecdoche, New York” is probably the most complex and far reaching work in his filmography thus far.

It is a rich and populated drama where Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theatre director who starts working on a live replica of New York City inside a warehouse. Set as the ultimate search for truth, the play serves as a mirror in which Caden can witness the unraveling of his own life.

While delving into deep existentialist themes, Kaufman still manages to slip a laugh here and there, albeit with a very dark and twisted sense of humor. Changing genres seamlessly, going from silly screwball comedy to soul-crushing existential drama with great ease, “Synecdoche, New York” is a complicated film to watch; it might make you reevaluate your entire life, or it might make you look in the mirror, where a nasty image awaits you.

Death is everywhere in this film, and it always comes unexpectedly, just as in life, so we may just as well enjoy our stay in this world while it lasts, instead of obsessively trying to find answers that aren’t there, or to wait for a salvation that will never come. It’s an invitation to create something beautiful."

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2017/15-best-absurdist-movies/

March 1, 2017

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Myspace Blog

March 1, 2008

Voice Impressions

There's a segment on NPR's All Things Considered called Voice Impressions where listeners are asked to give analogies to describe famous voices. Here's the newest one where they give the best entries describing last month's voices (of the presidential candidates) and they give the voices for next month's segment.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19195333

Here are my submissions for next month:

Andy Divine- His voice retains the bumps and bends, highs and lows of all his stagecoach rides.

Henry Kissinger- D.C Comics newest super-villain: The Napalm Frog

Jeanette MacDonald- Confetti falling among champagne bottles and punch glasses.

Christopher Walken- The former 1 car salesman, the day he brought a gun to work.

What are your submissions?