Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that! ~ Rocky Balboa
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Gilbert Gottfried, 1955-2022
One of my favorite comedians. We saw him do a show at the Improv in Irvine. I lived in Irvine for many years but didn’t go to the Improv much because comedians of any stature rarely show up there. I don’t know why. They do the Hollywood Improv, you’d think they could just drive up the road a piece, do a set in Irvine and pick up another check. I also heard Gilbert interviewed many times and I think he was even funnier conversationally than he was in his act, and his act was very funny. RIP Gilbert Gottfried Read more →
Have we reached the ultimate state of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today? — Thomas Sowell
Status
Sometimes when I taste the delicious acai berry, I put down my gun and give thanks to a nonexistent God.
A Celebration of Ignorance
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations… Read more →
If a man does his best, what else is there? — George S. Patton
How Lonely Can It Get?
I asked Hank Williams, “How lonely can it get?” Hank Williams hasn’t answered me yet. But I can hear him coughing all night long. A hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song. — Leonard Cohen Read more →
The Ballad of Joking Jesus
Goodbye goodbye write down all I said Tell Tom Dick and Harry I rose from the dead What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly and all of it’s breezy goodbye now goodbye — James Joyce Read more →
This Would Have Never Happened to Donald Trump
I don’t have any regard for Trevor Noah but if Biden’s lost Trevor Noah, he’s lost America. It doesn’t seem real. Noah is right though. If a Middle Eastern country didn’t take a call from Donald Trump, who knows what Trump would do? Start bombing mosques in descending order of holiness? You don’t know. So you answer the call. Preferably on the first ring. Read more →
He Is Therefore Responsible For All of It
The world, we are told, was made by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world, He foresaw all the pain and misery it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that… Read more →
Link
PBR or Ass?
Chess Game of the Day: Caro-Kann Defense
One of my online chess games. Two or three weak middle game moves by me and I got hit by an avalanche. Some annotations below . . . 1. …c6 Caro-Kann Defense 3. e5 Advance Variation 3. …c5 Botvinnik-Carls Defense 13. Qd4? Maybe 13. a4, instead of putting the queen where Black can point a bishop at it. 29. Ra2 Black has the best of things at this point. Possibly Rxf8, taking a piece out of the attack, is an improvement. 34. Ra8? Moving the rook back to a2 would have been better. 39. …Ra1 I thought 39. …Ra2 was better but this move still doesn’t put much of a dent in a large Black advantage. 41. Re2?? 41. Ke3 could have prolonged the agony. The game is really over at this point, but in a blitz game where we both had a little under 40 seconds left, why not… Read more →
There’s No Comprehending
There’s no comprehending Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes And the lips you can get And still feel so alone — Joni Mitchell, “Coyote” Read more →
Utterly Different From What We Expected
We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected. — Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom Read more →
Aside
Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one — You know yourself better than anyone else knows you.
P.J. O’Rourke, 1947-2022
Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor’s letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I’d abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist who, at the end of a forty-five minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting, “You’re fucked up! You don’t belong in the Army!” He was certainly right on the first count and probably right on the second. Anyway, I didn’t have to go. But that, of course, meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you… Read more →
Aside
Although experiences may seem solid, they are passing memories.
There Is No Country Like America
From an interview with Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears: There is no country like America. There is not. Not one. . . . I mean, I’m the one who got off the plane and here I am, here in the former capital of the Confederacy for goodness sake. I am second in command. Second in command. I’m a black woman. I am not first-generation American. I am still the immigrant. As I said, I’m a black woman, immigrant, and what else can you say to me that would say, well, “racism, racism, racism”? How do you explain me? I’m not an outlier. I’m not a one-off. The opportunities are here. Are we denying that there have been problems, that there has been slavery, that there has been racism, or that there has been segregation, and redlining, and blue codes, and all this stuff? No, we’re not denying any of that.… Read more →
God Hates Children?
“God hates children.” For a moment Viking Man is too lost in his reverie to have heard, but then he turns to the other man. “Can’t say I ever thought of it that way, vicar.” “God is always killing children in the Bible, or threatening to,” says Vikar. “He kills His own child.” Viking Man nods slowly. “That’s a hell of an observation,” he says. — Steve Erickson, Zeroville Read more →