so i started a new book

This fight always reminds me that Jackie Chan is truly a modern day Chaplin/Keaton. When recognizing physical comedians, Jackie has to be considered a modern king. This concept is so simple. STICKY FLOOR. That’s about it. And yet he makes absolute magic out of it. He gives us a solid fight sequence, genuine humor and some cheeky, sexy stuff. Everything you want, really. This fight might not be the most ferocious action sequence he’s done but, as far as comedic ideas go, this one is up there I think. It’s great.

When you’ve dedicated your life to words, it’s important to go out eloquently.

Ernest Hemingway: “Goodnight my kitten.” Spoken to his wife before he killed himself.

Jane Austen: “I want nothing but death.” In response to her sister, Cassandra, who was asking her if she wanted anything.

J.M Barrie: “I can’t sleep.”

L. Frank Baum: “Now I can cross the shifting sands.”

Edgar Allan Poe: “Lord help my poor soul.”

Thomas Hobbes: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap into the dark,”

Alfred Jarry: “I am dying…please, bring me a toothpick.”

Hunter S. Thompson: “Relax — this won’t hurt.”

Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!”

Anton Chekhov: “I haven’t had champagne for a long time.”

Mark Twain: “Good bye. If we meet—” Spoken to his daughter Clara.

Louisa May Alcott: “Is it not meningitis?” Alcott did not have meningitis, though she believed it to be so. She died from mercury poison.

Jean Cocteau: “Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.”

Washington Irving: “I have to set my pillows one more night, when will this end already?”

Leo Tolstoy: “But the peasants…how do the peasants die?”

Hans Christian Andersen: “Don’t ask me how I am! I understand nothing more.”

Charles Dickens: “On the ground!” He suffered a stroke outside his home and was asking to be laid on the ground.

H.G. Wells: “Go away! I’m all right.” He didn’t know he was dying.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “More light.”

W.C. Fields: “Goddamn the whole fucking world and everyone in it except you, Carlotta!” “Carlotta” was Carlotta Monti, actress and his mistress.

Voltaire: “Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” When asked by a priest to renounce Satan.

Dylan Thomas: “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies…I think that’s the record.”

George Bernard Shaw: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

Henry David Thoreau: “Moose…Indian.”

James Joyce: “Does nobody understand?”

Oscar Wilde: “Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.” 

Bob Hope: “Surprise me.” He was responding to his wife asking where he wanted to be buried.

Roald Dahl’s last words are commonly believed to be “you know, I’m not frightened. It’s just that I will miss you all so much!” which are the perfect last words. But, after he appeared to fall unconscious, a nurse injected him with morphine to ease his passing. His actual last words were a whispered “ow, fuck”

Salvador Dali hoped his last words would be “I do not believe in my death,” but instead, they were actually, “Where is my clock?”

He had been really fucking sick for days, and woke up from a feverish night. His nurse? Wife? Asked him if he was feeling better. He smiled, said “On the contrary!” And died.

Americans aren’t told this shit. 

The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.

Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.

She’s 60. She never heard of this.

As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.

He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods.  Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.

And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”

And she just looked floored.

“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”

“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “

She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.

“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.

And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”

She lived through it.