And the Cubs suck, too

October 8, 1871 -- Great Chicago fire occurred.

"(Chicago)...this vicious, stinking zoo...an elegant rockpile monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit." -- Hunter S. Thompson.



October 9, 1940. John Lennon born.

""Life is what happens when you are making other plans." -- John Lennon.

And then he dies

September 21 -- Author H. G. Wells was born Sept. 21, 1866. He wrote:

"Man is a brute...a blind prey to impulses...victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a burden, and fill his life with barren toil and trouble."

Then we have eternity to look forward to

Greta ("I vant to be alone") Garbo was born on this day in 1905.

"Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement." -- Aldous Huxley.

Ants get in trouble when they take antacid

Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was born on this day in 1809. He wrote:

"What is it all but a trouble of ants
In the gleam of a million million of suns?"

LIfe, freedom and lies

Catching up some more:

July 25: Today is Constitution Day in Puerto Rico.

"When people are free to do as they choose, they usually imitate each other." -- Eric Hoffer.



July 26: George Bernard Shaw was born July 26, 1856. He wrote:

"Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives."



Today: English author Hilaire Belloc (pictured above) was born on July 27, 1870. He wrote:

"The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie."

The absurdity is that it goes on and on

The great writer Franz Kafka was born on this day in 1883.

"The meaning of life is that it stops," Kafka wrote.

Or a noisy headache in a long street

English poet (and onetime Poet Laureate) John Masefield was born on this day in 1878. He wrote:

"Life is a long headache in a noisy street."

Death cured him

English poet Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688. He was the greatest poet of the 18th century and is one of the most-quoted writers ever. ("A little learning's a dangerous thing;" "An honest man's the noblest work of God;" "The proper study of Mankind is Man").

Pope was afflicted with a type of tuberculosis that affected his spine -- he never grew past 4' 6", and was a hunchback -- and which ended his life at the age of 56. Here is how he summed things up:

"This long disease, my life."

You have to have some absolutes in life

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was born on this day in 1813.

"My life is absolutely meaningless." -- Soren Kierkegaard.

That's the Playboy Philosophy, at least

Birthday of Hugh Hefner, born 1926.

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." -- Brendan Gill.

A house that must last a very long time

French writer and aphorist Michel de Montaigne was born on Feb. 28, 1533.

"The ceaseless labor of a man's whole life," he wrote, "is to build the house of death."

Ah sweet metronome of life!

Birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, born 1892. She wrote:

"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another--it is one damn thing over and over."

God's forever blowing bubbles

Today is the birthday of Francis Bacon, English philosopher and essayist. He wrote:

"The world's a bubble; and the life of man less than a span."

We'll drink to that

Prohibition was repealed on this date in 1933.

"Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life." -- George Bernard Shaw.

He wrote more, but we fell asleep reading it

English novelist Samuel Butler (Erewhon, The Way of All Flesh) was born on this day in 1835. He wrote:

"Life is one long process of getting tired."

What about the meaningless absurdity of Dr. Phil?

Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist (War and Peace), died on this day in 1910. Near the end of his life he wrote:

"The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man."

Today's Perverse Verse:

If you think life's absurd,
You may not have heard
There's another one waiting,
Even more excruciating.
If you long for -- at long last -- death,
Save your breath.

To read about Tolstoy on death, visit farewells.blogspot.com.