Reblogged.

From time to time I re-fall in love with life. I just had one of those profound moments of reflection.

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull parts taken out.”

Well I agree that 70 – 80% of life is tedium and monotony, but that other 30 – 20% is pure wonderfulness.

I realized that I have been to New York and Boston. I have been to London and St. Louis, Paris, Orlando, and I have eaten fried chicken in Philadelphia with my grandmother (whom I miss dearly). I have had sangria on the roof of the Met (one of my favorite places in the world) and I have watched the sky turn green in Ozark Missouri before a thunder storm. I’ve been to Branson and Las Vegas. I have stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower and at the top of the fake one at the Paris Casino. I have been thrown out of bars in San Francisco and loaned my jacket to a naked stripper in Fresno, who was trying to catch some ZZZs on the couch. I have been lucky enough to fall in love and unlucky enough to get stranded at Heathrow for two days. I’ve had fish thrown over my head at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle and I have stumbled ass backward into fist fights in Sun Valley. I personally discovered that the snow in Park City Utah is nature’s best beer cozy and also have experienced a couple of sublimely perfect days in Salt Lake City; there’s nothing quite as perfect as being in love in the cold. I have smoked cigarettes in San Diego while listening to Nada Surf live while landing jets passed overhead. I’ve driven a rented Vauxhall (on the wrong side of the road) all the way to Stonehenge and walked the world’s best museum in Shelburne Vermont. I have nearly died on a kayak off the coast of Catalina and I have been deliriously in love on 17-Mile-Drive around Pebble Beach. I have straddled the Prime Meridian and the US-Mexico border; for that matter I have flown a kite under a pier on a Mexican beach and personally haggled over the price of a lobster dinner. I have watched a Minute Man III missile launch from Vanderburgh before the sun had come up and I have stood on the flight deck of an operational aircraft carrier, with Tchaikovsky blaring in my headphones. I have known more amazing women than is fair and I have been lucky enough to love some of them and to be loved in return. I have unhooked corsets in dark rooms and made love on a bare stage (empty audience). I have been found guilty in court of a misdemeanor and I have cried in front of more than one therapist. I have fallen in love with the Brooklyn Bridge and been terrified by the Coronado Bridge. And next week I will go white water rafting on the Sacramento River and the week after I will hike into the Grand Canyon and then ride a helicopter out of it. There is no end to the things that I love about life, and while life never seems easy at the time, it is simply and always worth the effort.  

From time to time I re-fall in love with life.  

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Turtleneck.

This is neither here nor there, but I cannot remember the last time that I wore a turtleneck.

This is both a good, and wise thing. I am short and have inherited poor genetics that guarantee me a supple and fleshy chin and neck. So the turtleneck look is no good for me.

However, I like a simple, classic style enough to appreciate that the turtleneck can be a good look … if you’re really good looking.

That’s all I really had to say about that.

(P.S.: Sorry folks, not all of these posts can be winners.)

(P.P.S.: You try consistently generating original content on a regular basis, then complain about that time I posted about turtlenecks. Just saying.)

(P.P.P.S.: Dude, how fucking dreamy are Matt Bomer’s blue eyes? That fucker.)

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Soundtracked.

This song has been in my head all day. I think that is probably a good sign. The parts of my life when I feel good and pretty cool are usually soundtracked by The Editors.

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Commies.

I came across this today:

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, the call me a communist.

 Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda (1909-1999) 



Sing it brother.
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PostSecret.

PostSecret still, and always, the best thing on the internets.

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Salty History.

I just started reading the exact sort of book that I like. It is called “Salt” written by the very talented Mister Mark Kurlansky. It is actually called, “Salt; A World History” and it is about salt. Until about a hundred or so years ago people did not know that salt could be found LITERALLY everywhere, so there were great and busy efforts made to control the small known supplies of this life-sustaining stuff that also made our food taste better.

Well I am only about fifty pages in, but I was reading those fifty pages just now while eating lunch at the local Mexican place and drinking a margarita, so I now feel that I am qualified to give an entire college lecture about the history of salt. I will spare you this lecture, but would like to recount one story that I just read that (while seemingly unrelated to salt) is very, very funny.

The ancient Chinese empire first learned of the Romans (and by extension, the entire Western world) around 139B.C..  The Chinese emperor Wudi had sent an envoy called Zhang Qian off to the mysterious west in order to find allies. Well it took Zhang about six years but finally he reached an outlying Roman outpost in modern Turkistan. Well Zhang got all freaked out at what a fairly advanced civilization he found there. So he rushed home (it took him another 6 years to get back) and reported that an advanced civilization existed out west. Well an army was dispatched to conquer this newly discovered threat on the western front (took them another 6 years to get there, because apparently Odysseus was the most talented navigator of the ancient world and it took HIM ten years to sail from Turkey to Greece [sorry, that is a bitter jab that no one will ever get unless they are 1) an English major and 2) remotely familiar with the geography of the Mediterranean {which no English majors are}]).

So this Chinese army arrives in Turkistan around 102 B.C. and defeats the Roman outpost, then hangs out for a couple years, defeats the outpost again and then heads home (takes another 6 years to get back because they don’t have GPS) and then triumphantly announce that they have conquered the Roman Empire, because as far as they knew, they had.

Well in the intervening couple of decades between when the Chinese learned of Rome and when they “conquered” Rome, the actual Roman Empire had fallen to Germanic invaders, so into the modern era, there were descendants of the Wudi emperor who believed that they had – in point of fact – conquered Rome, never having known that Rome was an actual place a few hundred miles further west than their army had ever gone.

And I think that is funny.

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A Picture with Text on It Does Not Constitute a Meme.

A Picture with Text on It Does Not Constitute a Meme

by james bezerra

Our cricket team

has birthed an internet meme

because our star player of cricket

is the Ewok Wicket,

and who can resist pasting flippant text over

the face of such an iconic player?

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