Serendipitous Good Fortune

After four and a half hours of vigurous lawn work that caused me to miss a Chiefs win against the Raiders, I witnessed an absolutely glorious sunset while simply returning my daughter to her mother.

The sunset got me thinking. If I can witness a random event of such beauty and grandeur just because I happen to be out and our planet is rotating, what other wonders of the cosmos await us?



I had planned a fairly lengthy post on the glory and vastness of the universe (with illustrations and footnotes), a discussion of the pros and cons of any possible divine aspect to the universe, and a summary of the insignificance of our petty political squabbles when you look at the Big Picture.



But before I got around to doing all that, I cooked up some tacos, turned on the cable and there was James Garner in "Support Your Local Sheriff" (1969). I had just sat down to eat and it had just started. Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Bruce Dern, Walter Brennan. What a classic fucking movie.



Joe Danby (Bruce Dern): I hear you're gonna try and arrest me. You know you don't look near as tough as some of them other sheriffs we've had lately. Particularly that old boy that done run off about an hour and a half after he took the job.
Jason McCullough (James Garner): Joe, you just make me feel tired all over when you talk like that.
Joe Danby: Now, what do you mean by that?
Jason McCullough: It's bad enough to have to kill a man without having to listen to a whole lot of stupid talk from him first.

The pseudo-sequal to that was "Support Your Local Gunfighter" in 1971. A lot of the same folks playing different characters in a slightly different scenario, but basically a big ol' milky pull on the same udder. Every bit as funny as the first. Maybe funnier.



Latigo(James Garner): This your office?
Doc Schultz (Dub Taylor): I doctor pack mules, too. If you got a pain in the ass, you come see Doc Schultz.

It wasn't on tonight, but it's a good movie too.

If you get a chance to watch those two movies, do it.

Also check out the "Skin Game" with James Garner and Lou Gossett, Jr.



Basically, they are a couple of con men. They arrive in a town, James Garner sells Lou Gossett as a slave, Garner then secretly frees Gossett, they split the money and travel to another town and do it all over again. Hilarity ensues. Slavery has never been funnier.

Now it's 9:55 and I still have to shave my head, iron some clothes, make coffee for the morning and generally straighten shit up before hitting the bed hard.

So my extensive exposition on the nature of the universe (with illustrations), the existance (or non-existance) of god (with maybe a PowerPoint presentation and a couple of Excel speadsheets), and the place and purpose of humans in The Cosmos will have to wait because I got distracted by James Garner.

Now THAT is serendipity.



G'night, peeps.