Archive for the ‘Just Saying’ Category
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
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Welcome to installment number seven. These questions appear a little harder to answer simply. Only a frank discussion will bring the answers, both good and bad. Have fun . . .
- Would you rather play a game with someone more or less talented as you? Would it matter who’s watching?
- Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
- While in the government, you discover the President is committing extortion and other serious crimes. By exposing the situation, you might bring about the President’s downfall, but your career would be destroyed because you would be framed, fired, and suffer public humiliation on other matters. Knowing you would be vindicated five years later; would you blow the whistle? What if you knew you would never be vindicated?
- On a busy street you are approached apologetically by a well-dressed stranger who asks for a dollar to catch a bus and make a phone call. He says he has lost his wallet. What would you do? If approached in the same way by a haggard looking stranger claiming to be hungry and unable to find a job, what would you do?
- If by sacrificing your life you could contribute so much to the world that you would be honored in all nations, would you be willing to do so? If so, would you make the same sacrifice knowing that someone you thoroughly disliked would receive the honor while you went unrecognized?
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- Knowing you had a 50% chance of winning and would be paid 10 times the amount of your bet if you won, what fraction of what you now own would you be willing to wager?
- What are your most compulsive habits? Do you regularly struggled to break these habits?
- You know you will die of an incurable disease within three months. Would you allow yourself to be frozen within the week if you knew it would give you a modest chance of being revived in 1000 years and living a greatly extended life?
- You are driving late at night in a safe but deserted neighborhood when a dog suddenly darts in front of your car. Though you slam on the brakes, you hit the animal. Would you stop to see how injured the animal was? If you did so and found that the dog was dead but had a name tag, would you contact the owner?
- What do you most strive for in your life: accomplishment, security, love, power, excitement, knowledge, or something else?
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- An eccentric millionaire offers to donate a large sum to charity if you will step completely naked from a car onto a busy downtown street, walk four blocks, and climb back into the car. Knowing that there would be no danger of physical abuse, would you do it?
- How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people?
- Is the fact that you have never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
- Would you be willing to give up sex for five years if you could have wonderfully sensual and erotic dreams any night you wished?
- At a meal, your friends start belittling a common acquaintance. If you felt their criticisms were unjustified, would you defend the person?
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THE QUESTIONS KEEP GETTING MORE INTERESTING
I thought I’d pander to my readership today since so many of you love information about celebrities and Hollywood and blah, blah, blah. I won’t be writing too much on the current list of celebrities that everyone seems to adore but will step back into the near past for some actual interesting trivia. I don’t care who they’re currently dating, I don’t care what they have to say about anything, and least of all who they might or might not be sleeping with. I find historical trivia when it comes to the Entertainment industry much more interesting. Here we go . . .
- The American chemist Robert Hare discovered that a blow pipe flame acting upon a block of calcium oxide, which is lime, produces a brilliant white light that can be used to illuminate theater stages. We speak of someone who faces the glare of publicity as being in the “limelight”.
- In the mid-1960’s, the motion picture director-producer Stanley Kubrick wanted from Lloyds of London an insurance policy protecting against losses should extraterrestrial intelligences be discovered before completion and release of his far-out motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lloyds declined.
- By 1929, two years after the introduction of the “talkies”, motion pictures in the United States were attracting 100 million patrons every week.
- Northwestern University once conferred an honorary degree on a dummy of the wooden variety. On ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy.
- The English indirectly owe the preservation of Shakespeare’s birthplace to P. T. Barnum. In 1850’s, the Stratford-on-Avon cottage was neglected, and Barnum began to negotiate to acquire the house and have it shipped to his museum. The English were horrified and banded together to buy it and turned it into a national monument.
- In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Charlie Chaplin was probably the most celebrated man in the world. During a visit to his native London, the motion picture comedian received 73,000 letters in just two days.
- Acting was once considered so frivolous an occupation that authorities in Virginia, in 1610, forbade immigration of actors from England. Because of the evils that were thought to be associated with the craft, the cast of the first English play in colonial America in 1665 was arrested in Virginia, but later acquitted.
- The stellar cataclysm in the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in an abandoned corset factory in New York City. The cataclysm was a close-up shot of paint dripping in a bucket.
- There are songs in all of Shakespeare’s plays except for Comedy of Errors. That play was the basis for a Broadway musical in 1938 that won the Pulitzer Prize: The Boys from Syracuse, by Richard Rogers and Larry Hart.
- In 1957, Frank Sinatra was quoted as describing “rock-and-roll” as “funny and false and written and played for the most part by cretinous goons”. But when Elvis Presley finished his Army stint three or so years later, Sinatra paid him $125,000 to appear for 6 minutes on a television special.
GOTTA LOVE HOLLYWOOD . . . RIGHT?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
It’s once again time to introduce installment number seven of this series. As I’ve posted them, I’ve found the conversations between myself and my better-half to be quite interesting. Some of my answers have surprised her and some of hers have surprised me. That’s a good thing for any relationship when after twenty or more years together you can still be pleasantly surprised by each other. Let’s get started . . .
- One hot summer afternoon, while walking through a parking lot at a large shopping center, you notice a dog suffering badly from the heat inside a locked car. What would you do?
- Do you feel ill at ease going alone to either dinner or a movie? What about going on a vacation by yourself?
- If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?
- For $20,000 would you go for three months without washing, brushing your teeth, or using deodorant? Assume you could not explain your reasons to anyone.
- Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80? Assume that most of the last 30 years would be good ones.
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- If you were to discover that your closest friend was a heroin dealer, what would you do?
- Is it easy for you to accept help when you need it? Will you ask for help?
- If you were helping to raise money for charity and someone agreed to make a large contribution if you would perform at the upcoming fundraising show, would you? If so, what would you like to perform? Assume the show would have an audience of about 1000 people.
- Would you have one of your fingers surgically removed if it somehow guaranteed immunity from all major diseases?
- Would you like to be famous? In what way?
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- How do you picture your funeral? Is it important for you to have people mourn your death?
- Which of the following restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently, or never leaving the state in which you now live?
- You, your closest friend, and your father are on vacation together, hiking in a remote jungle. Your two companions stumble into a nest of poisonous vipers and are bitten repeatedly. You know neither will live without an immediate shot of antivenom, yet there is only a single dose of antivenom and that is in your pocket. What would you do?
- Where would you choose to be if you could place yourself anywhere on a scale from 1 to 10, where one is hardship, struggle, and extraordinary accomplishment and 10 is comfort, peace of mind, and no accomplishment. Why? Where are you now?
- If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon to be born child, would you do it?
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HAVE FUN WITH IT
I’ve considered myself an artist beginning at age five or six. I love creating art but I’m also a student of art history and read any and all information I can find. Here are a few samples of art history covering many decades and artists.
- The world’s largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and the neighboring Hermitage in Leningrad, Russia. One has to walk 15 miles to visit each of the 322 galleries, which house nearly 3,000,000 works of art and archaeological remains.
- The largest painting in the world is The Battle of Gettysburg, painted in 1883 by Paul Philippoteaux and 16 assistants, who worked for 2 1/2 years. It is 410 feet long, 70 feet high, and weighs 11,792 pounds. In 1964, the painting was bought by Joe King of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
- Henri Matisse’s La Bateau, hung in New York’s Museum of modern Art for 47 days in 1961 before someone noticed it was upside down. About 116,000 people had passed in front of the painting before the error was noted.
- Vincent Van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting.
- In 1930, during the depths of the depression, Andrew Mellon, the American financier, bought 21 paintings from Russia’s Hermitage Museum for $7 million. The Russians needed the cash, and this American millionaire has lots of it, even during the depression.
- As penance for a quarrel with Pope Julius II, Michelangelo, in 1505, began a more than year-long project creating a gigantic bronze portrait of His Holiness. Later, the portrait was melted down for cannon.
- “I am so rich that I just wiped out 100,000 francs,” said Picasso, after making a new picture he didn’t like disappear from his canvas.
- The genre of art known as Cubism derived its name from a belittling remark made by Henri Matisse in reference to a Braque painting. Matisse said that the landscape looked as though it were wholly made up of little cubes.
- In his earliest and poverty-stricken days, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his drawings.
- Pablo Picasso, when he died in 1973, left in for repositories in the South of France the following: 1876 paintings, 1355 sculptures, 2,880 ceramic pieces, more than 11,000 drawings and sketches, and some 27,000 etchings, engravings, and lithographs in various stages of completion.
YOU JUST NEED TO BE DEAD TO BE FAMOUS
I’m feeling somewhat sarcastic today. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me because I’ve been accused by many of using sarcasm every time I open my mouth. I can’t deny that accusation because it’s mostly true. I use sarcasm as both a weapon and also for defense against ignorance and noitallism. Noitallism is a word I’ve created to describe a common malady among certain people who think they know everything and can’t wait to rub your nose in their vast quantity of knowledge. It’s an ongoing game of verbal chess that I really do enjoy. Those of us who live for sarcasm have an interesting way of thinking as reflected by our sarcastic definitions of common words. Here are a few examples:
- AARP: American Association of Retired Persons. An organization that sends out welcome letters to people over 50 to remind them that they will soon be dead.
- ACADEMY AWARD: Recognition of achievement in the motion picture industry. Given annually to a group of people who are 100 times prettier, richer, and more popular than you will ever be or have any hope of being.
- ABS: A part of the human body that can, apparently in only minutes a day as part of this exclusive TV offer, become rock hard.
- ACNE: Nature’s way of telling you that you are not quite ready to have sex.
- ADULT: What you become when you finally give up drinking, sleeping around, and bouncing from job to job. Also known as the kill-me-now syndrome.
- BANK: A place to enjoy waiting in line when you can’t make it to the post office.
- COFFEE: A laxative that you can buy in the same place that sells croissants.
- EROTIC: Titillating, causing arousal. In other words, all the things you have to picture to look like you’re enjoying it with someone who would never let you do the things you’re picturing.
- FOREPLAY: Two minutes of boring displays of affection that must be endured if you want to get to the good stuff.
- FRIEND: A person you use to pass the time between relationships.
- INTERESTING: A word meaning “I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to say.”
- LIKE: A word that somewhere in the late 20th century began to be used as the connective tissue in all spoken sentences, despite the fact that the words on either side of it need nothing to connect them in the first place.
- LOVE: A deep and abiding affection that compels you to go to the bitter end with someone you should probably have ditched at the altar.
- SHAME: The realization that nobody else thinks the thing you were caught doing was as wholesome as you thought it was.
There you have it folks, your first introduction to some of the new and improved sarcastic definitions. A special thanks goes out to the VP of sarcasm, James Napoli, and all of us sarcastic SOB’s that seem to piss off just about everyone.
SARCASM RULES!
Being a collector of useless information and all types of odd trivia, I offer for your enjoyment today the following list of really strange occurrences and/or coincidences. I’ve firmly believed for years that there are no such things as coincidences but maybe these will prove me wrong.
- The Surete, the French precursor and modern counterpart of the FBI, was founded in 1812 by a man who was once named Public Enemy Number One. Eugene-Francois Vidocq, a thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime fighting organization, the Surete.
- The carpenter who built the first stocks in Boston in 1634, a man named Palmer, was the first to occupy them. He was charged with over-billing the town elders for the construction, found guilty, and sentenced to spend a half-hour in the stocks he had recently completed.
- To help determine on what floor it should have its offices in one of the two World Trade Center towers, a Japanese company hired a soothsayer to throw dice.
- A Harvard student on his way home to visit his parents fell between two railroad cars in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was rescued by an actor on his way to visit his sister in Philadelphia. The student was Robert Lincoln, heading to the White House to visit his father. The actor was Edwin Booth, the brother of the man who in a few weeks would murder the student’s father.
- The celebrated seventeenth-century pirate William Kidd was a wealthy landowner in New York state.
- Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley’s comet appeared. He predicted he would die when Halley’s comet next returned to scare everyone – and he did, in 1910. The comet returned again in 1986.
- U.S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes fifteen months of instruction at the Pentagon’s School of Music to turn out a bandleader but merely thirteen months to train a jet pilot.
- Eleven days before the statute of limitations was to expire on the three-million-dollar Brink’s bank robbery in Boston in 1950, one of the robbers confessed and betrayed his fellow robbers.
- During the Gold Rush days in California, Charlie Parkhurst was a stagecoach driver, taking passengers and gold shipments along dangerous roads. Charlie smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, played cards, drank and at one time shot dead two highwaymen. On December 31, 1879, Charlie was found dead at his home. As they were dressing the body for burial it was discovered that Charlie Parkhurst was a woman.
- The slave, Henry Brown escaped from Virginia in 1858 by hiding (with a box of biscuits and a bladder of water) in a box that was shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia. There, he popped out into “the free world.” He was forever after known as “Box” Brown.
Here is a message from my new 2023 calendar that specializes in profanity laced sayings.
January 5 – CHASE YOUR BIG F*****G DREAMS
Today is as good a day as any to continue this series with installment #5. It should make for interesting discussions to start the new year. I hope you enjoy these topics because they seem to be more interesting than those that came before. Just remember:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
- Can you urinate in front of another person?
- If you walk out of your house one morning and saw a bird with a broken wing huddled in some nearby bushes, what would you do?
- Assume there were a technological breakthrough that would allow people to travel as easily and cheaply between continents as between nearby cities. Unfortunately, there would also be 100,000 deaths a year from the device. Would you try to prevent its use?
- You and a person you love deeply are placed in separate rooms with a button next to each of you. You know you will both be killed unless one of you presses your button before 60 minutes pass; furthermore, the first to press the button will save the other person but will immediately be killed. What do you think you would do?
- When you tell a story, do you often exaggerate or embellish it? If so, why?
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- Do you feel that advice from older people carries a special weight because of their greater experience?
- Without your kidney as a transplant, someone close to you will die within one month. The odds that you will survive the operation are only 50%, but should you survive, you would be certain of a normal life expectancy. Would you consent to the operation?
- When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence? How much do you feel in control of the course of your life?
- If a friend were almost always late, would you resent it or simply allow for it? Can you be counted on to be on time?
- When did you last yell at someone? Why? Did you later regret it?
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- Would you be willing to have horrible nightmares every night for a year if you would be rewarded with extraordinary wealth?
- If you could have free, unlimited service for five years from an extremely good cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, masseuse, or personal secretary, which would you choose?
- Would you be willing to go to a slaughterhouse? Do you eat meat?
- Would you enjoy spending a month of solitude in a beautiful natural setting? Food and shelter would be provided but you would not see another person.
- After a medical examination, your doctor calls and gravely says you have a rare lymphatic cancer with only a few months to live. Five days later, she informs you that the lab test was mislabeled, and you are perfectly healthy. Forced for a moment to look death in the face, you have been allowed to turn and go on. During those difficult days you would certainly have gained some insights about yourself. Do you think they would be worth the pain?
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THESE ONES WILL GET YOU THINKING
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)
I’m not one to celebrate birthdays on this blog but as with everything there are exceptions. Today is the birthday of my favorite writer whose works have captivated me for more than fifty years. It all started in 1968 while I was serving in the Republic of South Korea. I discovered a copy of the Hobbit in the hooch of a young lady I was seeing. She couldn’t read English and I had no reading material worth reading at the time. She made it a gift to me, and I began reading it immediately.
I became lost in his world of the Shire, the hobbits, the dwarves, the elves, and the wizards. I read a portion of that book by the light of a flashlight as I sat in a foxhole. I had no access to the trilogy at that time and was forced to take a short leave, a quick hop on an Air Force plane to the Tokyo PX, where I purchased my first copies.
Over the years I’ve read those books at least a dozen times. Along the way I read everything I could find about J.R.R. including a number of books later published by his son. I still have some beautiful calendars from the 1970’s and 1980’s painted by a number of well-known artist of scenes from his stories. I also found out that alcohol and tattooing mix rather well together since I have the door symbol from the door of Moria on my upper arm. Right next to that I have a beautiful tattoo of Smaug.
I almost lost my mind when someone who was real fan of the books made the movies. I never thought it would happen. I was again truly excited when Amazon and Jeff Bezos released the latest prequel, The Rings of Power. I was happy to see they did a great job in tying it into the original story line. I became so interested I went back and began reading the Silmarillion for the fifth time. I look forward to the new season as any good fan would.
The man was amazing, and his works will be read and loved by millions more in the coming years.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN
Roy Howard Kerridge (11/26/1923 – 04/29/2011)
Many times over the years I have offered up quotations from the rich and famous in an attempt to make a point. As you do any type of research on the web you’ll find that many of those type of quotations are repeated over and over again. Some are supposed to be profound and informative, but I always wonder if the quote was actually written by the person its ascribed too. That’s just my cynical side rearing its ugly head for the thousandth time.
In recent years I’ve tried to search out the more obscure authors and philosophers that most people have never heard of. As I was exploring recently, I found a quote concerning prisons and criminal behavior. I was drawn to it immediately because of my Criminal Justice background. I’d never heard of the author but as I soon discovered he had a lot to say about a lot of subjects. They actual appealed to me because the author is known for his eccentric and idiosyncratic writings in many national newspapers and magazines, and of course in his column in the Salisbury Review. The Salisbury Review is a quarterly British magazine since 1982 and reflects conservative thought and ideals. Roy Kerridge was so obscure he received no mention in their Wikipedia entry even though he wrote many articles for them. He was an author who chronicled lost causes and also authored over 30 books on various subjects. Here is his take on the rehabilitation of criminals in a prison system.
“That is the whole beauty of prisons – the benefit is not to the prisoner, of being reformed or rehabilitated, but to the public. Prisons give those outside a resting period from town bullies and horrible characters, and for this we should be very grateful.”
This was his quote from The Lone Conformist in 1984
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R.I.P. ROY
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“The unexamined life is not worth living”
Socrates
Since Christmas has finally come and gone, I thought another installment of An Examined Life would get us all thinking about the end of another year and what we’ve accomplished or didn’t accomplish. Maybe these postings can assist us in deciding what our New Year’s resolutions might be. They’re always fun to write and I’ll be posting mine very soon. How about you?
- When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
- You have the power to go any distance into the future and after one year, return to the present with any knowledge you have gained from your experience, but you cannot bring any physical objects with you. Would you make the journey if it carried a 50% risk of death?
- Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as your dinner guest? As your closest friend? As your lover?
- While working late at night, you slightly scraped the side of a nearby Porsche. You’re certain no one else is aware of what happened. The damage is minor and would not be covered by insurance anyway. Would you leave a note?
- If you could choose the manner of your death, what would it be?
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- Do you have any specific long-term goals? What is one and how you plan to reach it?
- For what in your life do you feel the most grateful?
- How do you react when people sing “Happy Birthday” to you in a restaurant?
- What is the worst psychological torture you can imagine suffering? Anything causing even minor physical injury should not be considered.
- Would you like your spouse to be both smarter and more attractive than you?
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- If you found that a good friend had AIDS, would you avoid him or her? What if your brother or sister had it?
- Would you be willing to give up sex for one year if you knew it would give you a much deeper sense of peace than you have now?
- A good friend pulls off a well-conceived practical joke that plays on one of your foibles and makes you look ridiculous. How would you react?
- By controlling medical research funds, you are in the position to guarantee that a cure will be found in fifteen years for any disease you choose. Unfortunately, no progress on any others would be made during that period. Would you target one disease?
- Would you accept one year of life if it meant taking one year from the life of someone in the world selected at random? Would it matter if you were told whose life you had shortened?
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THESE SHOULD GENERATE SOME CONVERSATIONS
everyuselessthing.com 