The Daily Dose/May 17, 2025
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
CAPSULE BOOK REVIEW: What We Had by James Chace: We humans read for many reasons, and one of them is for insights into our collective human experience. For our money, the best at doing this are, in no particular order, are Gore Vidal, Will Durant, and Louis L’Amour, and we’ve obliged regular readers of this crap to suffer through quotes of theirs in the Some Philosophy Crap segment for years.
Dry, Technical Matter: One of the pleasures of reading is finding an insight of this sort where you really didn’t expect it, and we certainly weren’t expecting it here, because Mr Chace’s memoir was more meandering than anything.
Dry, Technical Matter II: Chase (1931-2004) was an American historian who grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. His memoir is about a prosperous town and his prosperous family, both of which eventually find hard times.
Write This Down: We were forging ahead in good spirits though, honestly, we were considering putting it down when we came across Mr Chase cutting our human experience down to one sentence. It’s from a recollection about working in one of his family’s cotton mills:
I learned how easy it is to prefer unhappiness to simple risk.
Holy Living F*ck: Good gravy, this is life in a nutshell: those who get on in this life exchange this unhappiness for some risk. They know themselves and the life they were put here to live, and they go and live that life. It’s how things get done, it’s how talents are maximized. It’s how we got humans to the moon and back safely. It’s how humanity advances, both individually and collectively.
Fly In The Ointment: On the other hand, those who shrug and accept less than they are meant to be are the ones unwilling to accept a little risk, unwilling to break away from the herd, unwilling to take a road less traveled. Every day it’s our call.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Rating Scale Right Here: 1 – The very best; 2 – Very good; 3 – Good; 4 – OK; 5 – A steaming pile.
Final Ranking: 2: The above line wasn’t the only morsel of wisdom, and they bump the final ranking up a bit because outside of some wisdom, we found the book to be rather dry. Chase’s family does have an assortment of oddities, but your family does, too. Some wisdom, though, is what you pay us writers for, and Chace delivers that, and What We Had is entitled to high marks.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow is in his element discussing flag etiquette. Today’s Diary.
No flag flies above the US flag, tho US law does allow for a pennant to fly above the flag when a Navy chaplain is conducting church at sea for sailors and Marines…
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
Editor’s Note: due to time constraints, the first two items ran in 2019.
In 1954 – The United States Supreme Court issues its landmark Brown v. Board of Education opinion, ruling unanimously that separate public schools for whites and blacks are unconstitutional. The case stemmed from a 1951 class-action suit by parents of students in Topeka, Kansas after the parents had attempted to enroll their kids in the closest public school, but had been turned down and instead referred to the nearest segregated school. Before reaching the Supreme Court, a Kansas district court had ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education.
In 1968 – Frank Howard of the Washington Senators establishes a new major league record for most home runs in five consecutive games with eight, homering once in a 7-3 loss to the Detroit Tigers. The following day Howard would hit two more home runs, tying his five-game record and establishing a new mark for most home runs in six consecutive games with ten. Both records would be tied by Barry Bonds in 2001.
Today – Bad Bunny is at #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart for the fourth non-consecutive week with Debi Tirar Mas Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos). It’s the ninth chart album for Bad Bunny, and his fourth #1. Fuerza Regida is at #2 in the survey with 111XPANTIA, marking the first time in the history of the Billboard album charts that two Spanish-language albums have occupied the top two spots.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
For it is a good general rule among men that they are ungrateful, fickle, liar and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince
Answer To The Last Trivia Questions
Knowledge is power.
Reggie Leach of the Philadelphia Flyers was the MVP of the 1976 Stanley Cup playoffs.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who had the first #1 on Billboard’s first album chart? – Answer next time!
