February 12, 2021

"On Earth, you've got to do something with your life... to prove you're alive..."

@americanbaron

Alien on a podcast #alien #et #podcast #loop

♬ Stranger Things (Main Theme) - I Love TV Themes

74 comments:

WK said...

You could just chill and do nothing or, I don’t know, hunt for food and shelter?

rhhardin said...

Nagging proves women are alive.

rhhardin said...

Western civilization proves men are alive.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

chill... do nothing... wait for someone to feed you.

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe on the alien's planet, the climate is always mild and there are wild trees with delicious fruit and gentle dodo birds you can grab by the neck whenever you want. You can imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed. You can even imagine Earth becoming that... but it would take a lot of work first. Why do all that just to leave your descendants a work-free world? Might as well just shirk as much as possible within your own little fast-expiring life.

DanTheMan said...

Hard work pays off in the long run.
Laziness pays off right now.

Mr Wibble said...

You can imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed. You can even imagine Earth becoming that...

It would be a hellish nightmare or a society no longer recognizable as human. Idleness breeds discontent, destruction, nihilism.

rehajm said...

I wanna rock...

DanTheMan said...

If you are doing nothing, how do you know when you are finished?

pacwest said...

A pretty pointed statement of the current problems we are having. We have to make our mark on the world! Hitler, Stalin and Mao among others did that in a big way. The wrong way of course, but still...

I'm sure Utopia is just around the corner if we get the process right this time.

Cool graphics btw.

Shawn Levasseur said...

Sounds like a rephrasing of one of my two favorite quotes:

"I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived" - Oliver Wendell Holmes


what's the other one?

"With great power comes great responsibility… No skill, no grace, but BAGS of responsibility" - Ambush Bug.

iowan2 said...

You can imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed. You can even imagine Earth becoming that

Ummm...Garden of Eden?

policraticus said...

Of course, the biggest difference between we striving humans who labor under the illusion that life has meaning and purpose and the carefree aliens who understand the truth, that life is without meaning or purpose, is that we exist and the aliens are imaginary.

tim maguire said...

Ann Althouse said...You can even imagine Earth becoming that... but it would take a lot of work first.

IMO, that's our inevitable fate. Inevitable, that is, so long as we don't let the barbarians tear it all down. Automated mining operations loading ore into driverless trucks that deliver raw materials to our houses to be turned into usable products by our 3-D printers. Robots will fix the robots, and make new ones. The whole world will be run by a million software engineers. The rest of us will sell necklaces on Etsy.

The people who are bringing us this world will become fabulously wealthy--that's their motivation. The rest of us are already just along for the ride.

iowan2 said...

If you are doing nothing, how do you know when you are finished?

Retired farmer was in the office, and I asked what was on his agenda. He said, 'funny, my wife asked the same thing at breakfast, and I said nothing. She said you did that yesterday, and I said "I didn't get done"

Another time, farmer 1 was having a cup of coffee in the office in the middle of planting season. Farmer 2 comes through to pick something up, takes not of the "loafer" and asks if he shouldn't be doing something productive. Farmer one said. "I'm slowing down now so retirement wont be such a shock to my system"

iowan2 said...

Find something you love to do, and you'll never work a day in your life.

PM said...

"Make a sandwich and you enjoy 5 minutes. Build a fence and you enjoy it forever."
- PM

Ficta said...

Okay. I did not expect to see a reference to Ambush Bug today. Bravo!

AZ Bob said...

What did we used to call people who do nothing?

Bums.

iowan2 said...

As we are animals, propagation of the species is hard wired. For humans, that means creating and rearing the next generation. To stray from that path offers discontent.

traditionalguy said...

Making work is the newest act of social responsibility. Government work specializes in imaginary rule enforcement. The result in Marxist USSR was the famous aphorism, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” And the real work became Waiting in lines.

I'm Full of Soup said...

My Sorta Weekly Per Capita Death report from Wuhan Flu. USA average is 144 deaths per 100,000 population.

28 states are at 144 or below.
13 states are above 144 but less than 200.
These 10 states are at 200 or above 200:

AZ 201
CT 206
LA 200
MA 220
MS 215
ND 192
NJ 251
NY 234
RI 215
SD 207

Althouse is only interested in WI which is 115.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

"Find something you love to do, and you'll never work a day in your life.”

I think that’s bullshit. Ever seen a pro golfer practice?

Fernandinande said...

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it."

mikee said...

Very, very few people think sewer maintenance and repair is worth doing without payment.

StephenFearby said...

"On Earth, you've got to do something with your life... to prove you're alive..."

Also, to prove you're brain dead:

'The Oregon Department of Education is promoting and encouraging its educators to register for a course that likens modern math instruction to the "toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture."

A newsletter sent by the government body last week included the mention of a course titled "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction," which teachers may partake in on Feb. 21. The program seeks to align educators with the "path to math equity" through exploring "ethnomathematics" with "culturally relevant, antiracist pedagogy, practices, and curriculum.

"White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions," the course description stated. "Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics."


'..."The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so," it said. "Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/oregon-math-course-racism-white-supremacy-teachers

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Ann Althouse said...

"...gentle dodo birds you can grab by the neck whenever you want. "

What! No self-frying chickens? Sounds like a shit hole to me!

pacwest said...

You can imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed. You can even imagine Earth becoming that

Ummm...Garden of Eden?


There will still be a devil in the coming utopia. He may be hard to find, but we will. Human nature. I pity the poor devil.

Sella Turcica said...

“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea...and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element...simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Kevin said...

The dodo bird thing reminds me of Lil' Abner. It's been decades, but didn't they have something like that? It was like the most delicious food in the world and it begged you to eat it, even jumping into your mouth?

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Kevin said...

The dodo bird thing reminds me of Lil' Abner. It's been decades, but didn't they have something like that? It was like the most delicious food in the world and it begged you to eat it, even jumping into your mouth?

Yep, it was called The Shmoo.

Narr said...

Schmoos, Kevin. IIRC; someone should check.

Narr
Yummm, schmoo . . .

Narr said...

Shmoo. Sorry.

Narr
I schtand corrected

BUMBLE BEE said...

THIS JUST IN!.... https://www.midwayusa.com/product/2090655809/ - IMI 9mm 115 expensive

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

Cogito, ergo sum.™

J L Oliver said...

Not doing something is most often boring. So much for liberation.

iowan2 said...

Very, very few people think sewer maintenance and repair is worth doing without payment.

You mean they would rather starve? Freeze to death? Forsake life itself, but for a few hours of time to be of service to others?

Narr said...

Vonnegut was on to something with his philosophy that we are really here to fart around and have fun. I would only add that that's obviously a male's perspective, and that women often seem to delight in keeping us from doing either.

Narr
Creative loafer

Rick.T. said...

You can imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed. You can even imagine Earth becoming that...
-----------------
Not that far away:

UBI
Netflix
Legalized drugs
Snacks

iowan2 said...

I think that’s bullshit. Ever seen a pro golfer practice?

Don't confuse effort with servitude.

Talent is truly a gift from God. Those that find that talent often expend a lot of effort to refine and enhance that talent, because it brings them a sense of self worth and accomplishment. A person that can "see" an equation emerge from a collection dissimilar numbers, may invest energy in study, to better understand and hone, that particular talent.

I'm Not Sure said...

"The people who are bringing us this world will become fabulously wealthy--that's their motivation. The rest of us are already just along for the ride."

Didn't Robert Heinlein have something to say about those people?

GingerBeer said...

I breathe. That seems like pretty good proof.

Ann Althouse said...

“ The dodo bird thing reminds me of Lil' Abner. It's been decades, but didn't they have something like that? It was like the most delicious food in the world and it begged you to eat it, even jumping into your mouth?”

Shmoos. Here’s my post about them.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Cartoonist Al Capp was already world-famous and a millionaire in 1948 when he introduced an armless pear-shaped character called the Shmoo into his daily "Li'l Abner" strip. The unusual creature loved humans. A Shmoo laid eggs and bottles of Grade A milk in an instant, and would gladly die and change itself into a sizzling steak if its owner merely looked at it hungrily. Its skin was fine leather, its eyes made perfect buttons and even its whiskers made excellent toothpicks. Shmoos multiplied much faster than rabbits, so owning a pair of Shmoos meant that any family was self-sufficient. Of course the Shmoos proved too good for humanity's sake and therein was the basis for Capp's ultimate (and tragic) satire....”

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Ann Althouse said...

Shmoos. Here’s my post about them.

Link is bad.

Ken B said...

Need a campaign to force Disney to abandon the name. Doubtless Walt sinned against woke standards somehow. A name change would really, really cost them. Needs to be done.

iowan2 said...

This question and answer session is scripted. Dems as questions, House Managers speak from written text for 5 minutes.

iowan2 said...

My bad, posted on the wrong thread.

rehajm said...

I learned about Shmoos from M*A*S*H. Thank you Sherman T. Potter...

daskol said...

Sounds like heaven, song from the Talking Heads

Everyone is trying to get to the bar
The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven
The band in Heaven, they play my favorite song
They play it once again, they play it all night long
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
There is a party, everyone is there
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time
It's hard to imagine that nothing at all
Could be so exciting, could be so much fun
Yeah, heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Yeah, heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
And when this kiss is over, it will…

daskol said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
daskol said...

Not the most exciting song musically but the lyric’s playful profundity pleases.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

"Don't confuse effort with servitude”

I could go all Socrates on you, but let’s just say that I have decided to disagree with you and continue to believe that it’s hard work to hone whatever gifts this universe may have bestowed on you, to a professional edge anyway. A lot of musicians do drugs to get through the drudgery.

Iman said...

imagine a planet paradise where no work is needed.

and no trabajo too-o-o-o

rcocean said...

One of the biggest myths of the Losertarian is that we have all our material prosperity and great medical science because people who thought it all up wanted to be rich or got rich.

Wrong. The vast majority wanted to be rewarded for their work. But their primary motivation was NOT getting rich. And the people who got RICH off of their work, had little to do with the technical, material, and medical advances of Western Civilization.

Bill Gates didn't write MS-DOS, or the computer, or a million other things. He just got rich off it. Zuckerprick stole the idea of facebook from someone else. Bezos did the same. Most of the great Gold/Diamond mining kings didn't discover the mineral wealth, they just came along afterwards and bought everyone out.

But people want to justify the Rich being Rich. Losertarians.

iowan2 said...

I have decided to disagree with you and continue to believe that it’s hard work to hone whatever gifts this universe may have bestowed on you,

I'm not really fighting with you per say, just waiting for a phone call mostly.
But. Its called a labor of love. I have been fortunate enough to know a lot of accomplished persons that "worked" till they died. Because they enjoyed what they were doing. They were good at it, looked forward to the challenge. When I was a teen, dad let me hire out to other farmers. One did farrow to finish. He had lots of money, but prefered pitching manure with a fork, to using a skidloader. He would often go back to the sheds after supper to pitch manure and listen to the radio, and keep an eye on the stock. He could look at a guilt and tell you when she was in heat, Vets were 50/50 at best. The man had talents and enjoyed using them. Working relaxed and settled him. My son-in-law, goes for a 20 mile bike ride after supper. That's not work, its torture. To each his own.
I have dozens of first person stories like that.
Maybe think of a minister,or priest, still shepherding his flock at 80. Is it work? Or a labor of love?

bagoh20 said...

Sloth is death without the freedom.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'm not sure that most people know what they love to do without doing other things too.

Browndog said...

Each man decides, on a daily basis, how to live their lives. Everyone must live with their choices.

No man has the right to decide if another did or did not live a full life.

stephen cooper said...

Sometimes I think the winners in life look at the losers in life and think the way the Dwarves thought about Bilbo Baggins in that first scene in the Hobbit.

By the way, I haven't seen any packages of Andy Capp's spicy potato sticks lately.

Captain BillieBob said...

I love to work a nothin all day
Takin care of business

Narr said...

Is what the Prof does here, work? Are comments?

IMO yes to the first and of course no the second. But if she doesn't consider it work in the alienating sense, who am I to argue? Did Shakespeare and Beethoven drag their sorry asses out of bed in the morning, d-r-e-a-d-i-n-g going back to work on the play or symphony? I'm guessing not.

Narr
I enjoyed about 80% of my paid work when I started and about 20% when I retired

stephen cooper said...

Since there has been a lull in commenting here, I am gonna contribute a few paragraphs. Don't bother reading them unless you want to.


I have a relative who is a multimillionaire, this one day me, my wife, and him went to what is called a stamp show. My relative is rich because he focused, since his late teens, on money markets, stock markets, that sort of thing. So anyway, here we all are, at the stamp show ---- (remember, there is some money in stamps, but in the great scheme of things, not a lot of money) and we walk from booth to booth, noticing things - often, the stamp sellers too wander from their booth to the next booth and excitedly discuss hobby things, and sometimes we overhear them saying emotional things ---- "I am so sorry Claire could not make it, I hope she gets better" ... long story short, after an hour of this, me and multimillionaire are leaving, and he says, these people have it made. They are happy because they love stamps, they love people who love stamps, and this world has a place for them. I am glad we spent an hour at the stamp show.

And then he says to me ----- amirite? and I say, well, yes and no. He says to me, I know you don't give a fuck about stamps ----- why did we come here today? (I was the one to suggest spending an hour at the stamp show).
I said, people are fascinated by me. I don't know why. Some of them like to hate me, some of them want to fix their daughters up with me (until they realize I am married), some of them want to tell me their life stories. Sometimes I go on line and try to speak to them heart to heart, which is a mistake, you would think, because there is so much frustration and nervousness out there when you tell people, but it is not a mistake, because I have no fear of telling people ....

GOD LOVES YOU



TIME IS A GREAT GIFT ---- we all have limited healthy hours.

And he said, well, how many people do you really make happy ---- he said "like, I have listened to late night radio all my life and NOBODY's LIFE IS CHANGED BY LATE NIGHT RADIO" and I say, "well, it's complicated".

Next time you hear something good that reminds you of something good you once heard on late night radio, think of me. Or don't. Just like you, so so many people have been kind to me over the years, and so many people have relied on me to do the right thing. Be kind, be better tomorrow than you are today, don't let people down.


Drago said...

As of today, the National Man-Boy Love And Political Grifter Cult known as The Lincoln Project, apparently so named because the "rocket scientists" at TLP believe Honest Abe was the epitome of Child Sex Grooming and Political Grifting (truly readering levels of historical ignorance), has disintegrated right before our very eyes in the most magnificent of ways.

Steve-Rotundo and Professional Political Loser-Schmidt has been reduced to playing the #HeToo card as an excuse for his going along with it all!

Where will Rick Wilson get the cash to purchase more Confederate Flag ice chests?

George Conway now will have to find new far left backers to fund his abstinence-enforced home lifestyle.

Interesting Althousian Quote:

I agree with every single thing the Lincoln Project has done and is doing.
---LLR-lefty and pro-dem marxist Chuck

LA_Bob said...

I'd like to see Jordan Peterson interview that alien...or vice versa.

Drago said...

Greenwald nails these Lincoln Project grifters:

"From the start, it was obvious that this disgraceful collapse was the inevitable end for this group. The very idea that this freakish hodgepodge of life-long D.C. Republican consultants were men of profound conscience defending the Republic was a complete and total joke. They are life-long grifters, responsible for some of the most grotesque and amoral attack ads in the modern era, with a very long and recent history of advocating the exact opposite values of what they claimed to represent once they opportunistically identified the optimal Trump-era profit model: namely, relentlessly fleece scared and gullible #Resistance liberals of their cash by posturing as brave and principled warriors against Trumpism."

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-lincoln-project-facing-multiple?r=23dzz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter

All so very very true.

Josephbleau said...

In the old western movies it was said A man’s got to make his mark on the land. Now that is a felony by EPA regulations.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I greatly rose above greatness here, and all you shits can do is shit shit shit.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I greatly rose above greatness here, and all you shits can do is shit shit shit?

Some sloppy dummies who got paid don't know nothing about no differences.

Drago said...

Guido, I for one salute you greatly rising above greatness with the greatliness of greatness.

Which is, in a word, gre..er..terrific.

Gospace said...

One of the reasons posited as to why technical advancements of all kinds came from the North and not from equatorial peoples and areas with ideal year round environments is because when the weather sucks for a good part of the year, and you have to raise, hunt, or farm your food rather than simply go out and gather it daily or fish for it (fishing/netting in tropical waters is much more leisurely than hunting) is because the technological advancements helped make life easier. If you can walk around for a bit and gather enough food for day, or throw a net out and gather enough fish for a feast- there's no incentive to work to make things easier- because they already are easy.

Siestas and midday rest periods come from temperate climes, not Northern Europe or Asia.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

It’s a mistake to believe that if you have a gift, that you will never have to apply yourself in a disciplined way, that you need only expend effort on it when you feel like it, and success will come. It’s a foolish mistake that will leave you on the huge trash heap of people with talent who never accomplished very much if you believe that the people who have accomplished great things only worked to develop their talent when they felt like it or were "inspired.’ It’s a truism in writing that people who only write when the feel like it never make it unless they have the rarest of gifts.

So if your saying “find something you love to do...” is aimed at one person in a million, then sure.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

A famous woman<<-- [I added that detail because Althouse seems to think these kinds of details are important] writer whose name I can’t remember once said “Writing is torture, having written is wonderful.”

This is what Phillip Roth said to a waiter who showed him his novel:

Waiting on his hero’s table, Tepper tremulously presented Roth with “Balls,” his first novel. Roth warmly congratulated him, and then offered: “I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

Roth was a gifted writer who was a huge success right out of college and never really had to struggle in the conventional sense.

Brian said...

The secret to human happiness is achieving the psychological state of "flow". Sometimes that's work you get paid for, sometimes that's just living simply in the woods.