Kirk Israel's commonplace and blog. Quotes and links daily since 2001.
2026.03.09
"The Measure" is a plainly written "what if" story with an interesting, almost Twilight Zone premise: what if everyone (22 and older) received a box containing a string EXACTLY corresponding to their overall lifespan. Would you open it? How would would knowing people have long strings or short strings mean culturally? What would it mean for the concept of free will (especially since sometimes people's reaction to the length of their string leads to their demise...)
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

Be groovy or leave, man.
Bob Dylan

"That's sort of why I hung [the vintage celebrity mugshots] up," Maura said, looking across the display. "They're a reminder that sometimes we screw up, and sometimes the system screws with us, but if you live your life with enough passion and boldness, then that's what you'll be remembered for. Not the crap that happened along the way."
Nikki Erlick, "The Measure"

It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi. [If forever doesn't exist we'll invent it ourselves.]
"The Measure", Nikki Erlick

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
2026.03.08
ahahahaahaa, your president, ladies and gentleman, and the media cronies who will cover for him...
So, Trump decided to "honor" the six service members who got killed by his Iran war by wearing (and never removing) his merch store baseball cap (get yours now, just $55 at https://www.trumpstore.com/headwear )
To try and cover, Fox & Friends shows footage of him looking less like a disrespectful travesty at last December's similar ceremony, and when caught on it try to pretend it was a mistake...

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Forget if I ever posted these PHP comics.
New Note.heic

2026.03.07
Tonight I played tuba for the Concord Lantern Parade, inaugural year for what should be a new tradition. There's always a little bit of magic in a lantern festival.

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(Also an earlier shot of the moon reflect thrice in the house's front window.)
2026.03.06
Officers' clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses.
Joseph Heller, "Catch 22".
The "readily aroused and easily satisfied" concept has stuck with me. There's so much ego in sexuality.
2026.03.05
Money is basically energy.
Some podcast guest's therapist
2026.03.04
2026.03.03
no see it wasn't "Board of Peace", it was "BORED of Peace". Our mistake..
Good opening credits video.

Christian Jihad ahoy.

One rule of thumb in watching movies: the bad guys are the ones working to bring on the end of the world. This applies in real life as well.


And honestly, "Israel" is distinctive but not inflammatory in normal American social space. It's not like walking around named "Armageddon Netanyahu McCrusade." It's just a biblical surname that happens to share a name with a country.
ChatGPT. I was using it as a sounding board for my discomfort with my name - because of the destruction wrought by the current government of that nation, because people make a guess about my background that is only about 1/4 right, because so many people spell it wrong.

Incompetence and suck-up-itism rules this land

Is Patel a DEI hire? And by DEI I mean "Donald's Ego-rubbing Intern"

Kash Patel's latest firings ousted agents with expertise in Iran

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