He Who Stops to Ponder…

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He Who Stops to Ponder…

In this week’s bonus blog, a friend of Ron’s in Hawaii sent him the text below. Please read on for “He Who Stops to Ponder…”

He who stops to ponder and think will generally come out ahead.

When Gandhi was studying law at University College, London, a Caucasian professor, whose last name was Peters, disliked him intensely and always displayed prejudice and animosity towards him. Also, because Gandhi never lowered his head when addressing him, as he expected, there were always arguments and confrontations.

One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University, and Gandhi came along with his tray and sat next to the professor. The professor said, “Mr. Gandhi, you do not understand. A pig and a bird do not sit together to eat.”  Gandhi looked at him as a parent would a rude child and calmly replied, “You do not worry professor. I will fly away,” and he went and sat at another table. 

Mr. Peters, reddened with rage, decided to take revenge on the next test paper, but Gandhi responded brilliantly to all questions. 

Mr. Peters, unhappy and frustrated, asked him the following question. “Mr. Gandhi, if you were walking down the street and found a package, and within was a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money, which one would you take?”  Without hesitating, Gandhi responded, “The one with the money, of course.”  Mr. Peters, smiling sarcastically, said, “I, in your place, would have taken wisdom, don’t you think? Gandhi shrugged indifferently and responded, “Each one takes what he doesn’t have.”

Mr. Peters, by this time was beside himself and so great was his anger that he wrote on Gandhi’s exam sheet the word “idiot” and gave it to Gandhi. Gandhi took the exam sheet and sat down at his desk trying very hard to remain calm while he contemplated his next move.  A few minutes later, Gandhi got up, went to the professor, and said to him in a dignified but sarcastically polite tone, “Mr. Peters, you signed the sheet, but you did not give me the grade.”

Wit always wins over anger.

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Friday Filosophy v.07.21.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.07.21.2023

We are back with a Friday blog post today! Please read some quotable quotes from various authors (our founder Ron Slee included!) in Friday Filosophy v.07.21.2023

Let’s focus on a different direction. We will start this off with what people call “Sleeisms.”

  1. Everyone wants to do things that they do well.
  2. Everyone can do more than they think they can.
  3. Everyone is fundamentally lazy.

We will continue with quotes from others, just to be well-rounded today:

  • Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift from God, which is why we can it the present. – Bil Keane.
  • A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. – George Bernhard Shaw.
  • We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in research for truth, and both have helped us in finding it. – Thomas Aquinas.
  • One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. – Abraham Maslow.
  • What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean. – Isaac Newton
  • No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. – Heraclitus
  • He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because he fears. Michel De Montaigne’
  • Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. – George Bernhard Shaw
  • Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Thomas A Edison
  • Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu
  • Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tress, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. – Albert Einstein
  • Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill
  • No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. – Nelson Mandela
  • True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful. Paul Sweeney

 

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.04.07.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.04.07.2023

For Friday Filosophy v.04.07.2023, our Founder, Ron Slee, shares quotes and words of wisdom from Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela, in full Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, byname Madiba, (born July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa—died December 5, 2013, Johannesburg), Black nationalist and the first Black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.

Nelson Mandela was the son of Chief Henry Mandela of the Madiba clan of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. After his father’s death, young Nelson was raised by Jongintaba, the regent of the Tembu. Nelson renounced his claim to the chieftainship to become a lawyer. He attended South African Native College (later the University of Fort Hare) and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand; he later passed the qualification exam to become a lawyer. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a Black-liberation group, and became a leader of its Youth League. That same year he met and married Evelyn Ntoko Mase. Mandela subsequently held other ANC leadership positions, through which he helped revitalize the organization and oppose the apartheid policies of the ruling National Party.

In 1952 in Johannesburg, with fellow ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Mandela established South Africa’s first Black law practice, specializing in cases resulting from the post-1948 apartheid legislation. Also, that year, Mandela played an important role in launching a campaign of defiance against South Africa’s pass laws, which required nonwhites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorizing their presence in areas that the government deemed “restricted” (i.e., generally reserved for the white population). He traveled throughout the country as part of the campaign, trying to build support for nonviolent means of protest against the discriminatory laws. In 1955 he was involved in drafting the Freedom Charter, a document calling for nonracial social democracy in South Africa.

Mandela’s antiapartheid activism made him a frequent target of the authorities. Starting in 1952, he was intermittently banned (severely restricted in travel, association, and speech). In December 1956 he was arrested with more than one hundred other people on charges of treason that were designed to harass antiapartheid activists. Mandela went on trial that same year and eventually was acquitted in 1961. During the extended court proceedings, he divorced his first wife and married Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela (Winnie Madikizela-Mandela).

After the massacre of unarmed Black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime. He went underground (during which time he became known as the Black Pimpernel for his ability to evade capture) and was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. In 1962 he went to Algeria for training in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, returning to South Africa later that year. On August 5, shortly after his return, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal; he was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.

In October 1963 the imprisoned Mandela and several other men were tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police had discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela’s speech from the dock, in which he admitted the truth of some of the charges made against him, was a classic defense of liberty and defiance of tyranny. (His speech garnered international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

 

From 1964 to 1982 Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town. He was subsequently kept at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988, when, after being treated for tuberculosis, he was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. The South African government periodically made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela, most notably in 1976, on the condition that he recognize the newly independent—and highly controversial—status of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to reside there. An offer made in 1985 required that he renounce the use of violence. Mandela refused both offers, the second on the premise that only free men were able to engage in such negotiations and, as a prisoner, he was not a free man.

Throughout his incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s Black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid. As South Africa’s political situation deteriorated after 1983, and particularly after 1988, he was engaged by ministers of Pres. P.W. Botha’s government in exploratory negotiations; he met with Botha’s successor, de Klerk, in December 1989.

On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison. Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the ANC; he became president of the party in July 1991. Mandela led the ANC in negotiations with de Klerk to end apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to nonracial democracy in South Africa.

In April 1994 the Mandela-led ANC won South Africa’s first elections by universal suffrage, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multiethnic government. He established in 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives designed to improve the living standards of the country’s Black population. In 1996 he oversaw the enactment of a new democratic constitution. Mandela resigned his post with the ANC in December 1997, transferring leadership of the party to his designated successor, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela had divorced in 1996, and in 1998 Mandela married Graca Machel, the widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and leader of Frelimo.

Mandela did not seek a second term as South African president and was succeeded by Mbeki in 1999. After leaving office Mandela retired from active politics but maintained a strong international presence as an advocate of peace, reconciliation, and social justice, often through the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, established in 1999. He was a founding member of the Elders, a group of international leaders established in 2007 for the promotion of conflict resolution and problem solving throughout the world. In 2008 Mandela was feted with several celebrations in South Africa, Great Britain, and other countries in honor of his 90th birthday.

Mandela Day, observed on Mandela’s birthday, was created to honor his legacy by promoting community service around the world. It was first observed on July 18, 2009, and was sponsored primarily by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the 46664 initiative (the foundation’s HIV/AIDS global awareness and prevention campaign); later that year the United Nations declared that the day would be observed annually as Nelson Mandela International Day.

  • It always seems impossible until it is done.
  • There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
  • Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.
  • I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
  • For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
  • It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
  • After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking, or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.
  • Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So, it is very important to give children an education and explain that they should play a role for their country.
  • Our human compassion binds us one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
  • I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.03.31.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.03.31.2023

For Friday Filosophy v.03.31.2023, our Founder, Ron Slee, shares quotes from comedian George Carlin.

George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed “the dean of counterculture comedians”. He was known for his black comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. His “seven dirty words” routine was central to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government’s power to censor indecent material on public airwaves.

Carlin said that he picked up an appreciation for the effective use of the English language from his mother, though they had a difficult relationship and he often ran away from home. He grew up on West 121st Street in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, which he and his friends called “White Harlem” because it “sounded a lot tougher than its real name”. 

Carlin joined the U.S. Air Force and trained as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, and began working as a disc jockey at radio station KJOE in nearby Shreveport. Labeled an “unproductive airman” by his superiors, he received a general discharge on July 29, 1957. During his time in the Air Force, he had been court-martialed three times and received many nonjudicial punishments and reprimands. 

Over time, Carlin changed his routines and his appearance; he grew his hair long, sported a beard and earrings, and typically dressed in T-shirts and blue jeans. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely for a comedian at a time when clean-cut, well-dressed comedians were the norm. 

In this period, Carlin perfected his well-known “seven dirty words” routine, which most notably appears on Class Clown.  The Supreme Court upheld the FCC action by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was “indecent but not obscene” and that the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience. The controversy increased Carlin’s fame. George Carlin was arrested seven times for reciting the “Seven Dirty Words” routine. 

Carlin was honored at the 1997 Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective, George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy, hosted by Jon Stewart. His first hardcover book, Brain Droppings (1997), sold nearly 900,000 copies and spent 40 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. 

In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards. 

Carlin had a history of heart problems spanning three decades. This included heart attacks in 1978, 1982, and 1991; an arrhythmia requiring an ablation procedure in 2003; a significant episode of heart failure in 2005; and two angioplasties on undisclosed dates.[ On June 22, 2008, at the age of 71, he died of heart failure at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. His death occurred one week after his last performance at The Orleans Hotel and Casino. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in front of various New York City nightclubs and over Spofford Lake in New Hampshire, where he had attended summer camp as an adolescent. 

  • Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
  • ‘I am’ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‘I do’ is the longest sentence?
  • I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.
  • What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?
  • Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.
  • I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
  • Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
  • People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.
  • If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
  • One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.
  • The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
  • Electricity is really just organized lightning.
  • I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.
  • You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.
  • I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
  • I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.
  • Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
  • In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.
  • When someone is impatient and says, ‘I haven’t got all day,’ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?
  • Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.

 

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023

Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023 offers thoughts and quotes from Joan Rivers.

Joan Sandra Molinsky (June 8, 1933 – September 4, 2014), known professionally as Joan Rivers, was an American comedian, actress, producer, writer and television host. She was noted for her blunt, often controversial comedic persona—heavily self-deprecating and acerbic, especially towards celebrities and politicians, delivered in her signature New York accent. She is considered a pioneer of women in comedy by many critics.

Rivers started her career in comedy clubs in Greenwich Village alongside her peers George Carlin, Woody Allen, and Richard Pryor. She then rose to prominence in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show. Hosted by her mentor, Johnny Carson, the show established River’s comedic style. In 1986, with her own rival program, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, Rivers became the first woman to host a late night network television talk show. She subsequently hosted The Joan Rivers Show (1989–1993), winning a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. From the mid-1990s, she became known for her comedic red carpet awards show celebrity interviews.[3][4] Rivers co-hosted the E! celebrity fashion show Fashion Police from 2010 to 2014 and starred in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? (2011–2014) with daughter Melissa Rivers.

In addition to marketing a line of jewelry and apparel on the QVC shopping channel, Rivers authored 12 best-selling books and three LP comedy albums under her own name: Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories (Warner Bros 1965), The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album (Buddah 1969), and What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? (Geffen 1983). She was nominated in 1984 for a Grammy Award for her album What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? and was nominated in 1994 for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance of the title role in Sally Marr … and Her Escorts. In 2009, Rivers competed alongside her daughter Melissa on the second season of The Celebrity Apprentice, ultimately winning the season. In 2015, Rivers posthumously received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for her book, Diary of a Mad Diva. 

In 1968, The New York Times television critic Jack Gould called Rivers “quite possibly the most intuitively funny woman alive”. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked her sixth on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time, and in October the same year, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. She is the subject of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010).

  • I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.
  • I said to my husband, ‘Why don’t you call out my name when we’re making love?’ He said, ‘I don’t want to wake you up.’
  • I wish I could tell you it gets better. It does not get better. YOU get better.
  • If you laugh at it, you can deal with it.
  • When you can laugh at yourself no one can ever make a fool of you.
  • Life is a movie, and you’re the star. Give it a happy ending.
  • To the pessimist the light at the end of the tunnel is another train.
  • Keep moving. It is hard for old age to hit a moving target.
  • Nothing is yours permanently, so you better enjoy it while it’s happening.
  • People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.
  • You know it’s time to start using mouthwash when your dentist leaves the room and sends in a canary.
  • Do you know why I feel older? I went to buy sexy underwear and they automatically gift wrapped it.
  • Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It is all funny.
  • I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.
  • I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
  • Marriage isn’t a contest to see who is most often right. Marriage requires being what the Japanese call ‘the wise bamboo,’ which means you bend so you don’t break. Treat your spouse with the flexibility and respect you would give to a top client. Think how we treat clients; We smile, we are polite, we listen to their ideas. Never forget that your spouse is your most important client.
  • When you first get married, they open the car door for you. Eighteen years now…once he opened the car door for me in the last four years – we were on the freeway at the time.
  • I use a smoke alarm as a timer.
  • If you cannot make fun of yourself, you don’t have any right to make fun of others.
  • Never admit that your back goes out more than you do.
  • The first time I see a jogger smiling, I will consider it.

 

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023 shares quotes from Irish comedian Dave Allen.

David Tynan O’Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, satirist, and actor. He was best known for his observational comedy. Allen regularly provoked indignation by highlighting political hypocrisy and showing disdain for religious authority. His technique and style have influenced young British comedians. 

Initially becoming known in Australia in 1963 and 1964, Allen made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s. The BBC aired his Dave Allen Show from 1971 to 1986, which was also exported to several other European countries. He had a major resurgence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Yugoslavia, Australia, and New Zealand. 

 At the end of each summer season, he did stand-up at strip clubs; for the next four years, he appeared in various night clubs, theatres, and working men’s clubs.  Allen’s first television appearance was on the BBC talent show New Faces in 1959. While on tour in Australia in 1963, he accepted an offer to headline a television talk show for Channel 9, Tonight with Dave Allen, which was successful. However, only six months after his television début he was banned from the Australian airwaves when, during a live broadcast, he told his show’s producer—who had been pressing him to go to a commercial break—to “go away and masturbate”, so that he could continue an entertaining interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The ban was quietly dropped as Allen’s popularity continued unabated. In 1967, he hosted his own comedy/chat series, Tonight with Dave Allen, made by ATV, for which he received the Variety Club’s ITV Personality of the Year Award.

He signed with the BBC in 1968 and appeared on The Dave Allen Show, a variety/comedy sketch series. The shows introduced his solo joke-telling-while-sitting-on-a-stool-and-drinking routine. This stand-up routine by Allen led to sketches that continued the themes touched on in the preceding monologues. 

As he grew older, Allen brought a rueful awareness of aging to his material, with reflections on the antics of teenagers and the sagging skin and sprouting facial hair of age. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards in 1996.

 

  • I suppose Ireland is the best place in the world for directions. People will say to you, “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”
  • And I said why did you tell me about all the right-hand turns? Why didn’t you just say take the first on the left? And he said, “Who’s giving these directions, me or you?”
  • An especially important part of the Irish way of life is death. See if anybody else anywhere else in the world dies, that’s the end of it. They are dead. But in Ireland when somebody dies we lay them out and watch them for a couple of days.
  • The terrible thing about dying over in Ireland is you miss your own wake. It is the best day of your life. You have paid for everything, and you can’t join in. Mind you, if you did you’d be drinking on your own.
  • First day at school. The first question they ask, what do you know about God?
  • Skin is actually quite an interesting subject. Do you know that we all shed skin? Did you know that? Did you know that each and every man, woman, and child sheds skin. Over an hour each and every one of us sheds something like 10,000-minute scales of skin. Over a three day period, we shed one total layer of skin. This is a fact. This is not made up. Did you know that 90% of the dust in the world is made up of dead human skin? How do you feel about that? Do you think you are dusting your house? You are not, you’re just moving your grandmother around.
  • You can become grey because of various different reasons. It can be hereditary. A malfunction of the genes can cause greyness. Anemia causes greyness; lacking Vitamin B and Vitamin F causes greyness. Vast quantities of liquids cause greyness. Shock causes greyness. Terror, fear, shock, actually it’s been recorded that a man went from being totally black haired to totally white-haired in something like seven minutes.
  • An old drunk is on his way into a bar when a nun standing outside the bar suddenly speaks to him. “Your drinking is the easy road to evil and damnation. Drink will pollute your body and soul. Give up the foul spirits and live a better life!” The drunk looks at her and asks, “How do you know that drinking is so bad for you?” The nun looks puzzled and shrugs. The drunk asks, “Have you ever even tried a drink?” The nun admits she has not, so the drunk tells her, “Listen, I’ll go into the bar and order myself a drink and I’ll get one for you too. I’ll bring it out here and you can taste it yourself and see that alcohol is nothing bad.” The nun reluctantly agrees, but says, “I don’t want anybody out here getting the wrong idea about me, so would you mind bringing me the drink in a paper cup?”. The drunk agrees to this and goes inside. At the bar, he tells the bartender “Give me a double shot of whiskey, and a second-half shot in a paper cup.” The bartender groans and says: “Is that bloody nun out there again?”

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023

Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts from comedian Steve Wright in Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023.

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and film producer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations. 

Wright was ranked as the 15th Greatest Comedian by Rolling Stone in its 2017 list of the 50 Greatest Stand-up Comics. His accolades include the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for starring in, writing, and producing the short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings (1988) and two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations as a producer of Louie (2010–15). He is known for his supporting role as Leon in the Peabody Award–winning tragicomedy web series Horace and Pete.

 He graduated from Emerson in 1978 and began performing stand-up comedy the following year at the Comedy Connection in Boston. Wright cites comic George Carlin and director and former standup comic Woody Allen as comedic influences. 

In 1982 executive producer of The Tonight Show Peter Lassally saw Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the Ding Ho comedy club in Cambridge, a venue Wright described as “half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club. It was a pretty weird place.” Lassally booked Wright on NBC‘s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where the comic so impressed host Johnny Carson and the studio audience that less than a week later Wright was invited to appear on the show again. 

By then Wright had firmly developed a new brand of obscure, laid-back performing and was rapidly building a cultlike following and an onstage persona characterized by an aura of obscurity, with his penchant for non sequiturs and impassive, slow delivery adding to his mystique. The performance became one of HBO’s longest-running and most requested comedy specials and propelled him to great success on the college-arena concert circuit. 

Numerous lists of jokes attributed to Wright circulate on the Internet, sometimes of dubious origin. Wright has said, “Someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn’t write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn’t write any of it. What’s disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I’m embarrassed that people think I thought of them because some are really bad.”[

After his 1990 comedy special Wicker Chairs and Gravity, Wright continued to do stand-up performances, but was absent from television, doing only occasional guest spots on late-night talk shows. In 1999 he wrote and directed the 30-minute short One Soldier, saying it’s “about a soldier who was in the Civil War, right after the war, with all these existentialist thoughts and wondering if there is a God and all that stuff.” 

  • Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.
  • I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So, I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
  • Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
  • A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.
  • When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.
  • Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.
  • A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
  • I installed a skylight in my apartment… the people who live above me are furious!
  • I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.
  • It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.
  • For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier… I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
  • I live on a one-way street that’s also a dead end. I’m not sure how I got there.
  • On the other hand, you have different fingers.
  • If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
  • I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
  • I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.
  • Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?
  • Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach… it ticks me off! I’ll go over to a little baby and say ‘What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life!’
  • Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
  • I went to a general store, but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.
  • I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.
  • I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world… perhaps you’ve seen it.
  • I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.
  • I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.
  • I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.03.03.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.03.03.2023

Friday Filosophy v.03.03.2023 offers quotes and words of wisdom from Robin Williams.

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills[ and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike, he is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. He received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s releasing several comedy albums including Reality … What a Concept in 1980. and He rose to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982). He made his first leading film role in Popeye (1980). Williams went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting (1997). His other Oscar-nominated roles were for Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), and The Fisher King (1991).

Williams also starred in the critically acclaimed dramas The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), Patch Adams (1998), One Hour Photo (2002), and World’s Greatest Dad (2009). He also starred in box office family films such as Hook (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Jack (1996), Flubber (1997), and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014). He lent his voice to the animated films Aladdin (1992), Robots (2005), Happy Feet (2006), and its 2011 sequel.

After suffering for many years from depression, paranoia, memory loss and insomnia, Williams died by suicide at his home in Paradise Cay, California on August 11, 2014. He was 63 years old. His autopsy revealed that undiagnosed and severe Lewy body disease had spread widely in his brain. His illness and death sparked debate over the conflation of psychology with neurology. 

  • I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.
  • Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’
  • No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.
  • People say satire is dead. It’s not dead; it’s alive and living in the White House.
  • Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma.
  • If it’s the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number?
  • The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and yelling, ‘You want a piece of me?’
  • We’ve had cloning in the South for years. It’s called cousins.
  • Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it ‘all the money,’ but they changed it to ‘alimony.’ It’s ripping your heart out through your wallet.
  • Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.
  • I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.
  • Never pick a fight with an ugly person, they’ve got nothing to lose.
  • Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party.
  • What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.
  • You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.
  • Cricket is basically baseball on valium.
  • I loved school, maybe too much, really. I was summa cum laude in high school. I was driven that way.
  • I have a difficult time doing an Irish accent; even now, it kind of fades slowly into Scottish.
  • When I went home from Juilliard, I couldn’t find acting work.
  • You can start any ‘Monty Python’ routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand.
  • A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills – no, no. They’d make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.02.24.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.02.24.2023

To close out February’s Friday Filosophy, Ron Slee shares quotes and words of wisdom from the melancholy Lord Byron. Please read on for Friday Filosophy v.02.24.2023.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.

Byron was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, later travelling extensively across Europe to places such as Italy, where he lived for seven years in Venice, Ravenna, and Pisa after he was forced to flee England due to lynching threats.[7] During his stay in Italy, he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.[8] Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire and died leading a campaign during that war, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero.[9] He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted after the First and Second Sieges of Missolonghi.

His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, was a founding figure in the field of computer programming based on her notes for Charles Babbage‘s Analytical Engine. Byron’s extramarital children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh, daughter of his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School in 1798 until his move back to England as a 10-year-old. In August 1799 he entered the school of Dr. William Glennie, in Dulwich. Placed under the care of a Dr. Bailey, he was encouraged to exercise in moderation but could not restrain himself from “violent” bouts in an attempt to overcompensate for his deformed foot. His mother interfered with his studies, often withdrawing him from school, with the result that he lacked discipline, and his classical studies were neglected.

In 1801, he was sent to Harrow School, where he remained until July 1805. An undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketer, he did represent the school during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord’s in 1805. 

His lack of moderation was not restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, and she was the reason he refused to return to Harrow in September 1803. His mother wrote, “He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth. “In Byron’s later memoirs, “Mary Chaworth is portrayed as the first object of his adult sexual feelings.” 

Byron finally returned in January 1804, to a more settled period, which saw the formation of a circle of emotional involvements with other Harrow boys, which he recalled with great vividness: “My school friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent)”. The most enduring of those was with John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare—four years Byron’s junior—whom he was to meet unexpectedly many years later in Italy (1821). His nostalgic poems about his Harrow friendships, Childish Recollections (1806), express a prescient “consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end make England untenable to him.”[ Letters to Byron in the John Murray archive contain evidence of a previously unremarked if short-lived romantic relationship with a younger boy at Harrow, John Thomas Claridge. 

The following autumn, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met and formed a close friendship with the younger John Edleston. About his “protégé” he wrote, “He has been my almost constant associate since October 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him forever.” Byron composed Thyrza, a series of elegies, in his memory. In later years, he described the affair as “a violent, though pure love and passion”. This statement, however, needs to be read in the context of hardening public attitudes toward homosexuality in England and the severe sanctions (including public hanging) against convicted or even suspected offenders. The liaison, on the other hand, may well have been “pure” out of respect for Edleston’s innocence, in contrast to the (probably) more sexually overt relations experienced at Harrow School. The poem “The Cornelian” was written about the cornelian that Byron received from Edleston. 

Byron spent three years at Trinity College, engaging in sexual escapades, boxing, horse riding, and gambling. While at Cambridge, he also formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse, who initiated him into the Cambridge Whig Club, which endorsed liberal politics, and Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King’s College, with whom he corresponded on literary and other matters until the end of his life. 

  • There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
  • Absence – that common cure of love.
  • Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
  • There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
  • Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
  • Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.
  • Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone.
  • Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
  • Yes, love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire with angels shared, by Allah given to lift from earth our low desire.
  • Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
  • Fame is the thirst of youth. 
  • Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.02.17.2023

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Friday Filosophy v.02.17.2023

Friday Filosophy v.02.17.2023 offers quotes and words of wisdom from the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was known as “the poem to Coleridge”. Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.

Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families, where he was taught by Ann Birkett, who insisted on instilling in her students traditions that included pursuing both scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day and Shrove Tuesday. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinson’s, including Mary, who later became his wife. 

After the death of Wordsworth’s mother, in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for nine years.

Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That same year he began attending St John’s College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy. Some modern critics suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around the mid-1810s, perhaps because most of the concerns that characterized his early poems (loss, death, endurance, separation, and abandonment) had been resolved in his writings and his life. By 1820, he was enjoying considerable success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of his earlier works.

 Wordsworth’s youthful political radicalism, unlike Coleridge’s, never led him to rebel against his religious upbringing. He remarked in 1812 that he was willing to shed his blood for the established Church of England, reflected in his Ecclesiastical Sketches of 1822. This religious conservatism also colors The Excursion (1814), a long poem that became extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It features three central characters: the Wanderer; the Solitary, who has experienced the hopes and miseries of the French Revolution; and the Pastor, who dominates the last third of the poem. 

Such kind of conversational tone persists all through the poetic journey of the poet, that positions him as a man in the society who speaks to the purpose of communion with the very common mass of the society. Again; “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”  is the evidence where the poet expresses why he is writing and what he is writing and what purpose it will serve to humanity.

Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. In 1837, the Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie reflected on her long acquaintance with Wordsworth. “He looks like a man that one must not speak to unless one has some sensible thing to say. However, he does occasionally converse cheerfully & well; and when one knows how benevolent & excellent he is, it disposes one to be very pleased with him.” William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere. His widow, Mary, published his lengthy autobiographical “Poem to Coleridge” as The Prelude several months after his death. Though it failed to interest people at the time, it has since come to be widely recognized as his masterpiece.

  • Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
  • Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
  • To begin, begin.
  • Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
  • Life is divided into three terms – that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.
  • To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
  • Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
  • Faith is a passionate intuition.
  • For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.
  • When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.
  • How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.
  • Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.
  • Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.
  • I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more
  • The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

 

The Time is Now

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