A Wikipedia Read that Almost Made Me Cry

From the article on Andy Kaufman, in the section about his death:

Kaufman died in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984^[26] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old.

Kaufman was survived by his daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 and put up for adoption shortly thereafter. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.^[27]

Because he kept the true nature of his health a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt. Rumors that Kaufman was still alive go as far back as May 17, 1984 (the day after he died), when a caller phoned the Howard Stern radio show on WNBC in New York to announce that Kaufman's death was a hoax. Friends and family said that Andy almost never smoked, did not drink regularly, and was also a vegetarian. At the time, lung cancer was considered rare for non-smokers to contract, and it is also rare in people under the age of 40. Kaufman himself even said that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later. On May 16, 2004, his surviving friends threw a 'Welcome Home Andy' party for him, which he did not attend.

Peace out

Plato at the Hockey Rink

If you've read The Republic by Plato, you'd get this.  Otherwise, all you need to know follows.  Plato and his philosopher buddies, while discussing the ideal nation, talk about its legal and justice system, but then realize they need to define what justice is.  After talking for a while, Plato concludes that "Justice is minding one's own business."  That's almost a direct quote from the English translation of The Republic.

Anyhow, I went to the hockey rink on Thursday before my class at 2:30 because it was a nice day and I want to get better at hockey and actually make my heart beat sometimes.  When I showed up, there was a family there.  The dad was wearing a white jersey and I think knee pads, and had short black hair.  There was an older son, maybe ten or eleven, with slightly longer black hair and a black shirt.  Then there were two kids, one was wearing a blue collared and buttoned dress shirt with blonde hair, and the other one I forget.

At one point I tried to shoot it on the net, but did something absolutely idiotic and shot it safely over the ten-foot-or-more chickenwire fences that surround the back of the rink.  I screamed an obscenity - sheepishly remembering a little later that there were five-year-olds in the rink with me - and then started looking for a way to get the puck.  It went out what I'll call the lower right corner of the rink, which is as far away from the pavement as you can get, so you'd have to walk through a LOT of mud and dirt to get the puck if you took the normal route.  I tried to open a door on that side of the rink (with the benches on it) to get closer to the puck, but it was nearly impossible from the inside of the rink.

So, instead I did the next best thing, which was to jump up on one of the benches on that side, hop onto the boards, and then use that to jump over the slightly-lower chickenwire fence that surrounds the benches.  This would keep me close to the puck and reduce how dirty my wheels got, but it was uncomfortable and I'm sure it looked weird.  As I was doing it, I suppose the little kids in the rink were watching.  One of them must have been focusing particularly acutely because I heard the older brother say, "Justice, mind your own business!"

I thought it was pretty funny, the exact combination of the kid's name and what his brother decided to say.  It was like the ghost of Plato was showing his philosopher buddies how clever he could be by bugging a kid at a hockey rink.

Peace out!