20000 rpms

"I don't like driving. Except when I'm going really fast."
- Sir Lewis Hamilton [born 1985]

cremated, no funeral

Carl Sagan's "Contact" read by Jodie Foster

 

Human Capital Management

Up in The Air [2009]

Ryan Bingham:

        [sitting across the aisle from each other on a plane] Natalie, what is it you think we do here?

Natalie Keener:

We prepare the newly unemployed for the emotional and physical hurdles of job hunting, while minimizing legal blow-back.

Ryan Bingham:

        That's what we're selling. It's not what we're doing.

Natalie Keener:

        

        Okay, what are we doing?

Ryan Bingham:

We are here to make limbo tolerable, to ferry wounded souls across the river of dread until the point where hope is dimly visible. And then stop the boat, shove them in the water and make them swim.

"Que sais-je?

“Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose. If you belittle yourself, you are believed. If you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”

– Michel de Montaigne [1533-1592]

career day

"I am not a manual labourer and please God I shall never be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pinch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner; the work would kill me in a few weeks."

- George Orwell [1903-1950], Road to Wigan Pier

thinking and feeling

"If all were rational nothing would get done."
- Attributed to Abigail Adams [1744-1818]

that's a wrap

 

hellraiser

 

"The only exercise I get is walking behind the coffins of old mates who exercised."
- Peter O'Toole [1932-2013]

severance

Free return Hong Kong lights

To combat lost tourism due to Covid and civil unrest, in 2023 Hong Kong will spend $2 billion to cover return flights anywhere globally here.

where the Foo Fighters stay

... and where celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger [born 1947] eat breakfast here.

Rob Riggle Plays Golf

 

prodigy

 

trouble-free

Papyrus depicting Cleopatra VII sitting on her throne

Relatively little changed for 3000 years in Ancient Egypt [3100 BCE-30 BCE] e.g. the wheel was adopted late and was not used in the construction of the pyramids. Secondary sources claim it was a time of relative happiness.

my relationship with a former professor

 

kicked out high school for cheating

 .

As punishment, Owen Wilson [born 1968] was sent to the New Mexico Military Institute for two years, where he met Wes Aderson [born 1969] who was friends with his roommate and launched his acting career. 

embarrassing

"It got to the point where I was so isolated with my work, music that I became socially awkward, strange. But I recovered. I integrated back into society through mixing , circulating"
- John Legend [born 1978] who is an EGOT by winning and Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

the news is the blues

"I got way too many blues for any more bad news."

- Kanye West, Gorgeous [born 1977]

Bipolar Disorder discussed here.

Why art?

Battle Between Marduk And Zu, Sumerian c. 3500 BCE

"Art helps to form the connective glue of society. It is no accident that art is a feature of every human civilization that has ever existed. Furthermore, the enjoyment of art plays a direct part in the life of each individual person. In other words, an individual may spend part of his time reading books, part of the time looking at paintings, etc. Even if the time we spent listening to music had no effect whatsoever upon our other activities that time would still represent some not insignificant fraction of our lives. However art does affect our other activities, and in some sense our whole life. Art connects us to our souls; it expresses our deepest feelings and validates them for us."
- Michael H. Hart [born 1932]